


Beneath the Jacaranda

by Geertrui



Series: Geisha AU [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Geisha, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Charles Stop Lying, Charles is a Tease, Crossdressing, Erik Has Feelings, Forbidden Love, Happy Ending, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, Illustrations, M/M, Mentions of Slavery, Romantic Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5107427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geertrui/pseuds/Geertrui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's only a rumour that Emma Frost's girls are among the Gifted, but true or not, her geisha are as illustrious as they are beautiful, and a handsome piece for any man to have on his arm. Raven is one of the most prized and prestigious geisha in the district, renowned for the grace with which she dances and her whip-quick tongue. Men fall in love with her with only a look, but they soon find that their pockets are only so deep, even if their hearts run deeper. </p>
<p>Only Raven - the <i>real</i> Raven - has been missing for ten years and lives on through her brother Charles, who uses her name as a geisha in Frost's okiya. Charles has never had trouble maintaining the fallacy for his clients, but when a foreign German businessman becomes a regular, Charles in turn becomes further encroached in his lies, and entangled in his heart.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>**Now with art by <a href="http://thacmis.tumblr.com/">Thacmis</a>**</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thacmis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thacmis/gifts).



> **Edit: [Mikanskey](http://mikanskey.tumblr.com/) did a _beautiful_ piece of fanart for this story! Please [ check it out](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5346236) and give it some love!!!**
> 
> For the 2015 Secret Mutant Exchange! Unbeta'd, so any mistakes are my own.
> 
> This prompt was so much fun! I had to do a fair bit of research for it (watching _Memoirs of a Geisha_ counts, alright), but it was good to flex my Japanese cultural muscles again. As such, a lot of this is _kind_ of culturally correct, but obviously some key things had to be changed up to fit the prompt. I made some 'intentional mistakes' with some aspects of the geisha lifestyle for plot, but feel free to point out any inaccuracies and I'll fix them up if I can! Because this incorporates a lot of traditional Japanese culture, there's lots of untranslatable Japanese terms, and a lot of geisha terminology, too, so quick warning for that (too many for me to do a translation key really, it might be easy to have google open in another tab). Sorry in advance for my italics abuse otl. 
> 
> I tagged for slavery, but it is not a prevalent theme with this. I just wanted to be safe in case anyone is iffy about it. 
> 
> Also sorry for me being lazy and stuck in a time restraint and thus a lil bit unoriginal: ambiguous setting and time period for this fic, but I hope it doesn't take away from anything. While this was written with a deadline, I got a bit excited about all the tropes and cliches I could play around with, and so I hope the word count isn't too intimidating.. I feel like for this prompt there had to be a lot of build up, and as a romantic drama, there had to be multiple complications. Still, I hope this isn't too long and drawn out! 
> 
> Original prompt will be in the end notes so as to not reveal anything! (Not that the prompt really does, but oh well) 
> 
> To Thacmis, I really hope I meet your expectations with this! It was such an original, fun prompt, and one that I personally enjoyed as well and had so much fun writing, so thank you for coming up with it. A lot of your beautiful art helped inspire this, and the delicate way you draw Charles is how I envisioned him for this fic. I hope you, and everyone, enjoys reading!

 

 

 

~*~

  
“Raven?”

And then everything stops; the pounding in Charles’ ears, the shaking of his hands where he’s still gripping the white embroidered hem of his _nagajuban._ The heat in his cheeks recedes to a chill that chases down his spine when he snaps his head to look up at Erik’s face.

Erik is standing on the _tatami_ flooring of his bedroom, hand braced against a woodbeam in the paper door, eyes wide and so obviously and unabashedly sweeping across Charles’ naked chest, down down down; to where the thin under-kimono is drawn loosely drawn at his waist, obscuring his hips-

And only his hips.

Cold realisation spikes in his chest and settles in his gut when Erik’s eyes settle on the flat plains of his chest, where the flimsy kimono puckers around the space that breasts Charles doesn’t have should fill.

His thoughts are loud and heavy, cutting into Charles’ frantic mind and leaving him petrified, stock-still and silent. 

Erik knows. He’s found out what Charles _always_ knew was inevitable, always dreaded, yet was too weak to stop and end when he should have. It’s too late.

***

The girls in the _okiya_ are always excited on evenings like this, their minds and mouths buzzing and loud. Charles _would_ take Moira up on her offer of betting on when Emma will break from her placid countenance, under the strain of the rhythmic pounding in her head caused by Kitty and Jubilation, if only their raucousness didn’t inspire a similar pain in his own closed and sheltered mind. All Emma need do is emerge from her office, hands hidden in the sleeves of her pristine kimono, and give the two _maiko_ a chilled look that speaks volumes more than she ever would with her voice. “Mother,” they whisper in penance with bowed heads, hurrying off quietly to the consolation of the housemaid Marie, who only clicks her tongue and ushers them to their room to dress. Charles isn’t so sure why their hyperactivity is so grating to his nerves as it is tonight - he’s used to this, they’re always bright and exuberant on the nights they’re to accompany Charles and Jean to the teahouse. Maybe he’s coming down with something.

“Or maybe,” starts Moira as she pokes her head over Charles’ shoulder and watches his reflection, “You’re just nervous.”

Charles’ unfocused eyes flicker to where Moira stands behind him in the mirror. “Don’t be silly,” he grins. “I haven’t been nervous since _I_ was _maiko_.”

Moira raises a thin eyebrow and pulls the _obi_ tight around his middle, folding it into its thick and elaborate square knot. He’s used to the heavy tightness of the sash now, and looses a sigh when she finishes her tucking and pulling and smoothes the creases with her thin hands. “But it’s not just the regular clients tonight,” she teases, and Charles bites the inside of his cheek. 

“Please, Moira. I accompanied Emma on her visit to the prime minister,” Charles tries with a smile, but he’s sure the nerves are heavy in his voice.

“I’d almost forgotten you had Mother for a big sister,” she says then, pushing on his shoulders to coax him into a kneel. “What are you worried for, then? She’s taught you everything you’ll need to know.”

Charles can’t argue the truth in her words. Behind him, Moira turns and brings his wig from the stand on the dresser, settling it over the dyed black curls of his natural hair. It’s the last piece to his outfit, the final symbol of his _geiko_ status. “I’m sure you’re Gifted with beauty, too,” Moira tells him, squeezing his shoulders.

Charles rises, straightening his back, evening his gaze. The dark ink surrounding his blue eyes only serves to make them brighter. His eyes have always won over patrons, have always brought money into the _okiya,_ along with his quick wit and careful smiles. Tonight will be no different.

Jean is waiting for him outside his bedroom door when he finally emerges, perfumed by jasmine and lavender and shadowed by their eager attendant. “Took you long enough,” she says through a smirk, taking his arm and gliding down the hall with easy steps. Her dark red kimono wisps around her ankles, the scratch of satin a familiar sound in Charles’ ears. Only Emma has perfected the technique of walking without a sound. Charles isn’t sure if it’s beautiful or eerie.

Kitty and Jubilee are standing in the _genkan_ with a watchful Marie behind them, ready to pinch their ears should they fuss in their pale purple winter kimonos. She wraps thick furs around Charles’ shoulders when he and Jean float into the entryway, patting him down to make sure his kimono sits where it should. “You’ll do well tonight,” she says with a small smile, holding his elbow as he steps down into his _geta._ “Win them for us.” Charles gives a slight nod, not yet trusting his voice. Marie, Moira, they’re both right - he’s done this before, and he’ll have Jean by his side should he slip up. Kitty and Jubilee both grin and nod at him, their bottom lips bright red and full, the dangling white metal cherry blossoms on their hairpins swaying and chinking.

“Men fall in love with you with only one look,” Jean says, taking her _shamisen_ from Marie. “I’d almost be jealous if it weren’t so good for business.”

Charles can’t help a grin, ducking his head. “I suppose I’m just worried you’ll be cross with me for stealing your clients,” he jokes, voice light and high and airy, and Jean rolls her eyes.

Their open carriage is waiting for them out on the small street, and the ride to the teahouse allows Charles a moment to himself, no one pulling at the elaborate fabrics covering his body, no one smoothing white paste over his face. The air is laced with a thread of cold that bites at his cheeks and his bare, painted neck as they’re driven through the cobblestoned streets of the _hanamachi,_ winding between bathhouses and numerous other _okiya,_ butnone as prestigious as the one he hails from. He supposes he has that, at least; that he was taken in by Emma and not holed away in some brothel in the pleasure district. He loves her for it, loves all the girls as his family; but they could never fill the empty space in his chest, the one carved out when Raven was taken from him.

Charles knows it isn’t good to think on her now, to think on his past before such an important night, and instead he tries to brace himself and get lost in the minds around him. Men and women walk along the bustling streets in their kimonos and Western suits; sitting cosy and safe from the late winter chill in their shingled and slant-roofed homes, like misshapen boxes all stacked haphazardly on top of one another, lit by kerosene lamps and framed by sturdy strong wood beams and all pressed side by side like fish at the market. Lanterns swing from posts in the small breeze, decorated and bright and casting a burnt orange hue over the stone ground and lighting the frozen slush lining the gutters. Jean is talking softly to Kitty, about tonight, about how important it is, saying words like sponsors and international and delegation. Charles shuts his eyes, swallows, listens to the minds and the wind and the streets, and falls into the act he knows so well.

With ten years of training behind him, it isn’t hard.

He’s only been to the Genosha Ochaya twice in his career; the first when he was _maiko_ and Emma’s little sister, accompanying her the night she entertained the prime minister, the second when in his first year of being _geiko,_ and Jean’s sponsor had invited him along on one of their dinners. Its tiered roofs and stacked box windows haven’t left his memory, and when the carriage pulls to a stop just shy of the front gate its grandeur and magnificence only serve to inspire a nagging dread under his ribs rather than excitement. Kitty and Jubilee have kept their glee internal upon stepping from the carriage, but Charles can feel their buzz at the top of his neck, and hopes he can leech whatever confidence he can from them.

Lanterns line a small stone path that winds from the gate through the frost covered garden, and Charles steps easily over the short distance from rock to rock, back straight, hands folded in his long sleeves. Their driver leads them to the verandah, where he stands, knocks, and bows curtly when the servant slides the rice paper door aside and takes the fur scarves from their shoulders. Charles can already hear men laughing and cheering and women tittering on the many floors of the teahouse. They stand a moment in the _genkan_ before they’re ushered upstairs into a private tea room, and in that moment, Jean turns to him, patting his shoulders and gazing at him with a steady look from her dark eyes.

“Jubilee will stay with me, and we’re to talk to the German. You’re to take Kitty and talk to the American; Sebastian Shaw. Emma told me he’s a man with cool eyes and a sharp face, and is interested in starting business here. Ensure that he does.” Her lips are as red as her kimono, her obi black and embroidered with intricate gold patterns. Charles’ own snow-white sash feels much too tight. New clients are always a risk - if anyone looks twice, if anyone realises… “Logan is hosting,” Jean continues, and Charles can let a sigh.

“Is that why you’re dressed so tonight?” he leers quietly, smirk catching in the blood red of his lips. Jean gives him a warning look.

“International businessmen reek of money,” is all she says, turning and following the servant.

Charles can hear talking on the other side of the rice paper door, deep velvet voices that are as warm as their minds. If they’re already a little drunk, there’s less chance of anyone noticing the roundness of his fingers, the coarse undertones of his voice. All the American men he’s entertained have been so unobservant thus far, tonight will be no different.

The servant slides the door, and a hush falls over the men when they see Jean just shy of the entrance. With lowered eyes and her chin tipped down a fraction, she steps out of her slippers and floats down onto thelowered _tatami_ floor of the tea room, hands lost in the long _furi_ that are only just shorter than Charles’ own. Charles swallows, takes a breath laced with lavender and green tea and tobacco, and follows her, never looking up at the men sitting around the _kotatsu_ in the middle of the room.

“The Phoenix and her Raven!” Logan roars, holding his _sake_ cup over his head, and only then does Charles look up, offering a careful smile to the men around the table. There’s four of them, including Logan, watching from above their cups with heavy eyes that follow every perfect line and layer of their kimonos. He catches the attention of a man with a heavy brow and a sharp jaw, and quirks his full lips just so, intrigued and yet knowing, in control. It’s a smirk Emma taught him. The delegate’s gaze never falters, steel grey eyes level with Charles’ own and so intense and calculating Charles would blush if he weren’t so well trained. He lowers his head, shifting his weight and bobbing in a slow and fluid bow. 

After she too bows, along with Kitty and Jubilee behind her, Jean turns her cheek in delicate coyness. “Such a boisterous introduction, Mr Howlett.” Her voice flows like silk and wraps around the hearts of the men in the room.

“Perhaps it is not in your nature to be vociferous, but to be beautiful? Another matter entirely,” flirts Logan, voice low and full of the rasp and gravel obtained by years of chain-smoking thick foreign cigars. “And how can you deny me the celebration of beauty?”

From what Charles knows of Logan’s Gift, he is unable to suffer inebriation. Jean knows this, too, and she hides it well behind a careful smile, playing bashful at his compliments, pretending like they’re only drunken admissions split from a lack of inhibition. “If we should celebrate anything, it should be the arrival of our international beneficiaries, no?” she replies, inclining her head just so towards the three men around the table. She glides to the side, outstretching her arm and turning her wrist up. “The two _maiko_ of our _okiya,_ Kitty and Jubilation, will be joining us tonight. I hope you will not tease them too much, gentlemen.” There’s a hearty chuckle, and the two young girls bow. Then Jean continues.

“And this is our _geiko,_ Raven.” 

Charles steps forward easily, the powder blue silk of his kimono rustling around his thin ankles and over the _tatami._ “It’s a privilege to be with you tonight, gentlemen,” he says, voice quiet and small yet edged with a seam of confidence, finishing with a gentle pout to his lips, and he doesn’t need to read their minds to know he has them captured in his spell.

"The privilege will be ours when you all come join us," Logan encourages with a quirk to his thick eyebrows, and Charles smiles at him, casting his gaze over the group. _A man with cool eyes and a sharp face_. Charles flicks his eyes to the right, and the man from before is still watching him carefully. _I already have him._

Charles steps towards the _kotatsu_ first, trusting Kitty to fall in behind him, and with careful and practised steps he comes to the sequined cushion next to the American, lowering himself steadily and adopting the _seiza_ position he knows so well. He feels a quizzical thought from Kitty, but ignores it, focusing instead on the foreigner’s grey eyes.  

His voice is smooth when he speaks, and he lids his black eyelids just so, perking his lips and turning his cheek to the American. “And how are you finding the evening, Mr Shaw?” he asks with interest. His patron grins, settling his teacup back to the low table and chuckling, deep and quiet.

Charles tentatively flexes his telepathy, and cold realisation fills him beneath his white and red smirked mask before the man can even reply.

“The winter here is much more agreeable than the winters in Germany,” he says, accent heavy and curling around vowels that no American accent would curl around. “And so I enjoy the evenings greatly. However,” he turns to Charles, offering him an almost conspiratorial grin before continuing, “I hope I cause no embarrassment, but I should tell you, I’m Shaw’s partner, Lehnsherr.”

With every word Charles can feel his pulse pick up, his stomach sink, and a cold lump settle in his throat. The roof of his mouth tastes of metal. The _German_ watches him with gentle humour, his eyes intense and yet kind, not incriminating, not resentful. He nods to across the table, to where Jean has sat down between Shaw and a wiry boy with similar spectacles, and Charles allows his eyes to flick over quickly. Jean is smiling and pouring tea, Jubilee moused next to Logan’s hankering form. Lehnsherr leans forward, almost too close to be proper. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, and Charles finds himself lost in those eyes again. “Raven, was it?”

He manages to swallow the lump in his throat, and smiles at the German anew and afresh, reaching to pour him more tea, distracting himself. “I’m so terribly sorry, Mr Lehnsherr. To tell you it was a slip of the tongue would be a lie, and I feel that would only cast a darker shadow over our meeting.”

Lehnsherr waves him off, taking his cup between his long fingers after Charles settles the pot back to the coaster on the table. “Please, think on it no more. It was a simple and easy mistake.”

 _One I’d make again,_ Charles finds himself thinking, almost on accident. He watches Lehnsherr take a careful sip, pursing his lips against the bitter tea and savouring the taste. Business, Charles thinks. He was meant to entice Shaw to stay. He can still try with his partner. “Still, I thank you for your forgiveness. You’re very kind. That must be a dangerous trait when dealing with business matters, though,” he comments, allowing the thick sleeve of his kimono to reveal the bone of his wrist, noting a success when he notices the subtle flick of Lehnsherr’s grey eyes down to his arm.

“I can be fierce, too, don’t you worry. I’m glad my reputation doesn’t precede me in that regard.” 

“Are you worried you would scare me away?” Charles inquires lightly. “This is only our first meeting, but I can’t see anything to be fearful of.”

“I’d hate to push my luck, regardless,” Lehnsherr replies, and his eyes glint with something heavy. The skin on the back of Charles’ neck prickles coolly.

Kitty presses a confused thought to him from where she sits just to his side, but Charles ignores it, instead favouring the German’s vague flirting. He’s used to sweet words and finding double meanings in cleverly strung sentences, but this is different; he’s unable to get the upperhand, but the way with which Lehnsherr delivers his swift quips makes him feel nervous for a completely different reason.

“How long are you expecting to stay here?” Charles asks, edging their conversation back towards business. A servant quietly slides the door open, and two more walk in laden with small steaming plates and bowls. Jubliee clears the table of the teapot while Jean talks with Shaw opposite Charles, smiling at him and tilting her head. Logan’s staring at his _sake_ cup. Charles looks away from him before Lehnsherr can pick up on anything.

“Just three weeks, then we head back to America,” the German tells him. “If all is well on that end, I’ll be back.”

“And what is business?” Charles asks, and the servants settle bowls and hot pans on the table.

“Steel mill,” Lehnsherr says before finishing his tea and clearing the cup away. “Shaw and I started up in America, and now we’re attempting to establish ourselves and trade elsewhere. Alongside our accountant, McCoy, so as to make sure we behave ourselves.”

Charles begins to scoop rice from the steaming pot in front of him into smaller bowls, laying them gently in front of Lehnsherr and the wiry boy near him, whom he’s yet to speak to but assumes is McCoy. Kitty presses another concern to him, but he ignores it once again. He feels guilty for being so cold, but she’ll understand - Lehnsherr smiles warmly at him again, after all.

“How modern,” Charles comments, uncapping the bottle of drinking _sake_ and pouring steady amounts into the quickly emptying cups on the table. When Lehnsherr places his thin fingers over his own - empty and clean - and shakes his head almost imperceptibly, Charles raises his eyebrows a fraction and nods once. “And you were in meetings today? How did that go?”

"You’re very inquisitive,” Lehnsherr remarks lightly, but it doesn’t sound accusatory and his mouth is quirked happily. “Our proposals have yet to be accepted, but things are looking good.”

Charles pours him a tea and lets Jubilee swindle the _sake_ from him to fill a glum Logan again. “Little much happens in our _hanamachi,”_ he tells him, and he hopes it’s enough. “I do hope all works out. It would be wonderful to show you all the festivals during the spring.”

“It would be wonderful to have you show me,” Lehnsherr says, and it sounds almost like a purr.

Logan settles back into himself quickly over dinner, and recounts raucously stories that Charles is sure are at least partially fabled. He’s heard several of them previously, when Logan hosted other men and had Emma’s geishas hired, but they still make him huff his laughter. Lehnsherr’s grin is incredibly broad, and when he notices Charles looking at him he schools himself into a simple smile. Charles catches a thin thought of insecurity and tries to melt it away with his own beaming smile, and he’s sure it works; McCoy struggles with his chopsticks, and while Kitty helps him along Lehnsherr looses that feral grin again, his own chopsticks almost perfect between his fingers.

Charles and Jean are to dance after dinner, with Kitty playing Jean’s _shamisen,_ and Charles feels a little nervous. He hasn’t been nervous since he was _maiko,_ and can’t bear to think on it much; on what it means, especially.

With minds warmed on _sake,_ Charles is sure that he could wave his fan above his head and have Shaw giving them a standing ovation. Regardless, he draws on his skills like breaths and twines his mind with Jean’s, and together they become the Phoenix and the Raven, finding perfect, almost uncanny syncopation and balance between them. Whispered about behind the dainty palms of geisha from other _okiya,_ their dances are widely renowned and never to be ousted from their rightful high status. The rumours that Emma Frost only keeps Gifted girls have never been confirmed, and never will be, the mystery adding a cloud of allure around her _okiya_ and keeping its prices high.

Now, Charles watches Lehnsherr between flicks of his fans, scanning his eyes over the men but always inexplicably settling back to the German. The kerosene lamps have been dimmed around their audience, but his eyes still shine and find Charles from where he sits, and he hopes Jean can’t feel a thing.

With kimonos wisping around their wrists and hips, their fans fluttering open and slicing through the charged, smoky air with quick snaps, Charles can feel they have their audience entranced, and claims a win for their _okiya._ They bow when they finish, and Shaw claps loudly while Logan grouses something about never seeing them dance better from around a thick cigar. Charles finds Lehnsherr clapping softly, and watching only him.

 _Switch with me, quickly,_ Jean projects, urgency and a hint of irritation on the edge of her thoughts and hidden behind her gentle lips and poised bow. When Lehnsherr smiles at him it’s easy for Charles to ignore her and float back down to his stolen spot next to the German.

“You were very, very good,” Lehnsherr tells him with something gentle and adamant in his voice and calculating in his eyes, when Charles has settled next to him.

“You’re most kind, Mr Lehnsherr.”

“Do call me Erik,” he insists.

“Erik,” Charles repeats, and the name is thick on his tongue. Erik’s eyes flash with something heated.

Their evening unfolds without a hitch, smoothed by _sake,_ Logan’s filthy jokes, and Shaw’s tales from America. Charles thinks the man a little arrogant, but that could just be attributed to the alcohol. Every time he turns to talk to Erik exclusively he garners a well hidden yet cold glance from Jean, and knows she’ll snap at him in the privacy of the _okiya,_ knows she’ll probably tell _Emma_ and then he’ll be in all kinds of trouble, but for now he’s fine enough chatting with this amicable German with wonderful, intense eyes.

Conversation passes no further than Charles sweet talking Erik’s age from him - he’s thirty in three months, but he’s scared to tell Logan because if they’re still in touch for business matters he’s sure the man would hire out a brothel, which would be rather embarrassing, Erik admits.

Late in the evening, Shaw and Logan press Charles to dance again, and so he does while Jean plays her _shamisen_ and offers him static thoughts. Suddenly, defying her to be with Erik doesn’t seem all that worth it anymore, and the cold seam to her mind makes him swallow and wet his lips. He feels Erik’s mind focused solely on him for his dance, and he prays that it counts for something.

“Wonderful, once again,” Shaw declares, a little wobbly where he sprawls by the _kotatsu,_ and Charles flicks him a smile. The American’s thoughts are like liquid, running in a stream only to taper down and dribble into obscurity. His mind is malleable, and Charles could easily convince him to book from Emma next week - but he _can’t_ , wouldn’t ever be able to bring himself to use his gift for something like that, struggles to even read the minds around him without _remembering_. Besides, he might not even have to; Charles delves reluctantly into his mind and finds it swirling with an almost unsettling cloud of lust. Erik is smiling at him quiet and pensive from over his teacup, and Charles releases a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

He’s used to the lecherous minds of men and women. He’s used to overhearing all the lewd, terrible thoughts people keep, some nothing more than intrusive comments, but others more sinister and developed than that; being used to it doesn’t make it any more bearable, however. Erik’s mind is clear and crisp, rather than soggy at the edges from a dousing of alcohol, and is full of only hearty respect and a coiling intrigue for Charles.

Logan has to heft Shaw under his arms when their evening is up at nearly midnight, almost dragging him down the stairs from the private tearoom. Erik tails McCoy, who grips the brim of his hat and bows a little awkward and stiff to the girls. “Thank you for tonight,” he says, voice thin, and Charles can feel for all his mousey jittering a strength and intelligence in his mind. 

Erik turns before he too leaves the room and the girls, standing in a line by the _kotatsu_ with their heads ducked down in slight bows. “Thank you for tonight,” he repeats, voice thick and heavy and low. Charles can’t help flicking his eyes up, and when he does, he finds Erik watching only him.

Jean holds them in silence as they listen to the men’s footfalls clattering on the stairs - Shaw’s easily discernable. As soon as the stairwell is silent, Jean turns on Charles, eyes hard. “What was that?” she asks slowly, but with nothing casual lacing her words, and Charles swallows and can’t meet the fire in her eyes.

“Lehnsherr will come back. I felt his mind,” he says steadily. “He’ll bring Shaw.”

A muscle twitches in Jean’s thin cheek where she clenches her jaw too tight, and her eyes flick between Charles’, searching and calculating. “He’d better,” she tells him with a sigh, being mindful of her makeup as she holds a hand to her forehead. “I have a terrible headache from all that smoking. Get rid of it for me?”

Charles smiles at her, bringing his fingers to his temple. She could never be mad at him for long; they’re family. “As long as you don’t tell Mother.”

Jean snorts. “Of course I will. You can’t get away with everything.” She motions for Kitty to wrap the _shamisen._ “At least everything worked out in the end, and Emma will be pleased with our earnings for the night.”

A servant comes to the door to lead them out to their waiting carriage, and Jubilee hangs from Charles’ arm as they walk, chittering on about how nice the dinner smelt and how good Charles and Jean were tonight and how wonderful it all was. She starts to drowse as they walk, and Charles has to shake her a little and coax her into her _geta_ once they find themselves back in the entryway. Their furs are wrapped around them, and with a successful night behind him Charles doesn’t feel the cold as much once they step out onto the verandah.

A figure stands against the railing down a ways from the entrance, the orange tip of his cigarette flaring in time with a drag and illuminating his thin lips. Erik smiles at Charles, thin wisps of smoke spilling from the side of his mouth and coiling in the air around his head. He tips the brim of his hat towards Charles and his posse, something smart-looking and Western, and in return Charles offers a gentle smirk and drops into a small bow, turning quickly and leading Jubilee back down the stone path to the gate.

The urge niggles at the back of his mind and itches in his fingertips. After all his training, Charles can usually suppress his instincts and his impulses, but just as they step out into the wet, quiet street, he can’t help but indulge just this once and cast a look back to the _ochaya._ Erik is still watching him, the gentle light from inside casting a soft hue around him that catches on the dark wood and makes it glisten where sleet has wet it. His cigarette burns away between his knuckles for a moment, and Charles watches him take a long draw from it, holding the smoke before blowing it out in a steady stream. Charles’ chest tightens with something inexplicable.

When Charles turns back to the carriage, Jean is watching him with something pensive in her eyes, her mouth a tight line that makes her cheekbones hard. Ignoring her concerns Charles steps up into the carriage, and as they speed off back to the _okiya_ he can’t help but catch himself finding a familiar beauty to the grey slushed ice lining the streets, the grey smoke swirling and spilling from the mouths of thin chimneys, and the orange flares of red lanterns that burn just as brightly as the tips of lit cigarettes.

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

With a steady stream of customers throughout the next week and a half, Charles finds little time alone between Marie stuffing him with salmon and sweet egg rolls and Moira tightly wrapping a bright _obi_ around his waist and shunting him off in a rickshaw to a teahouse, or a banquet, or a festival being held in the _hanamachi._ With hardly a spare moment to think, Charles almost forgets all about Erik Lehnsherr and the night at the Genosha Ochaya, leaving him to be remembered only in Emma’s chequebooks as simply another client. It all comes back one morning over breakfast, when Emma settles her _miso_ bowl back to the table and watches her girls through clear eyes and with a straight back.

“The business associates Shaw and Lehnsherr have requested the company of Jean and Charles once more.” Charles looks up from his bowl of rice, swallowing heavily and feeling his heart give a peculiar little flutter in his suddenly tight chest. If Emma picks up on him, she ignores it and continues instead. “You’re to join them at a dinner being held in the city by their benefactor. I hear from Logan that their proposal has been accepted, and more than that, they’ve decided to base their factory north of the city, an hour by train.” She smiles over the lip of her teacup. “Well done, all of you.”

Excitement. Excitement is coiling and thrumming in his chest, and his lungs feel full against his ribs. “We don’t know if they’ll come to us again, though,” he tries, hoping Jean isn’t watching him too close and Emma doesn’t have her telepathy nestled at the back of his skull.

“They’re taking you to their _beneficiaries,_ Charles,” Kitty urges, full of glee. “That definitely means _something._ ”

“And you did get so close with the German,” Jubilee finishes. Emma’s eyebrow quirks sharply, mouth tight, but before she can speak Charles cuts in.

“Well, we’re all to thank for this. We all did well.” He resumes his breakfast, and hopes they all leave it at that.

The dinner is to be held on Friday, and while Charles has several regular clients booked to fill his days, he still finds himself itching for the end of the week to come sooner. The anticipation nearly makes him feel queasy however, and when Thursday night comes he finds himself lying on his _futon_ and trying to steady his breaths. He doesn’t even _know_ Erik; these are only the perfunctory nerves he always eventually manages to wrangle and harness and taper down, that always sprout up like weeds before he’s to entertain at a big event. This is normal. Nothing influenced, induced or incited. 

The girls are sleeping soundly when Charles slips tendrils of his telepathy out and searches for their minds late in the night, and Charles envies them their sweet, calm dreams. He knows he needs to ease his mind and sleep, or else he’ll find himself drifting off face first into a steaming bowl of _udon_ noodles at the dinner tomorrow; but every time he shuts his eyes he sees green stippled grey and thin smirks.

When he finally manages to sleep, he dreams of foreign words curled around a heavy German accent and long fingers curled around his jaw, holding him still and close and in a space heated by shared breaths and tobacco. Erik’s lips are dry when they brush his own, and Charles awakes with a jolt, his thin silk nightdress sticking to his chest and thighs. Dawn is only just breaking, and Charles sighs heavily and slumps back into the feather down of his _futon_ with a strange tugging in his stomach. He doesn’t fall back asleep.

Breakfast is held late in the morning, and with Emma clearing out his and Jean’s schedules for the day their meal is leisurely and slow, and Anna Marie makes sure to feed them heartily. “Don’t make them bloat!” chides Moira, stealing away Charles’ third helping of rice and clutching it to her chest. “Their kimonos won’t fit! They’ll be unable to dance!”

Ever since he was younger and assisting Emma or Jean, preparing for the evenings has always been one of Charles’ favourite activities. With his body hidden by thick heavy kimonos during the winter, Charles usually doesn’t bother, but for tonight he sits in the washroom with a basin of heated water by his side and paints his legs in a thick white cream, which he chases with the sharp blade of his razor. Shaving takes a long while, what with the amount of hair that dusts his shins and thighs despite his thin and feminine build, but he enjoys it, falls into the methodical movements with practised ease and allows his mind to drift while the radio plays some crackling, popular American tune.

When he brings the razor to drag carefully over the whiskers on his chin and jaw, he can’t help but think of how clean-shaven Erik had been, the night of the dinner, almost two weeks ago now. He idly wonders if he ever grows a beard, or sports a little stubble. He wonders what it would feel like under his palm.

After a small lunch Moira follows him up into his room where she pulls his makeup from the drawers in his dresser, and lays them out on the counter. On most days Charles enjoys applying his mask himself, falling into the familiar motions and letting his mind run wild on fantasies and ponderings that he might blush about in Emma or Jean’s presence, but for now Moira soothes back his hair and kneels in front of him, ready to begin. He tries not to remember the dream.

The thin hairs on the makeup brush are soft with quality. Moira paints with a quick and practised deftness and sure flicks of her wrist, tracing his thick nose and squared jaw and smoothing the hard lines of his face into something gentle and feminine. The powder used to make Charles sneeze, back when he was _maiko_ and still learning how to conceal his naturally tan complexion, but now he relishes in the way it clings to his skin and turns him into someone else, someone beautiful and graceful and sought after. He almost feels itchy in his clothes when he’s not in his persona, when he isn’t using his sister’s name and winning clients.

Charles supposes that when he’s older, it’ll be harder to hide all the tell-tale signs of his masculinity, that he won’t be able to be a geisha forever, like Emma. She’ll deny vehemently that she’s anywhere near being in her forties, but Charles will allow her that for she doesn’t look a day past twenty, her skin supple and firm where Moira already has crows feet and laughter lines. Charles likes to think that maybe she secretly keeps a _third_ gift, of immortalised beauty, but he knows the fantasy is just how he copes with his envy.

He burns the small stick of charcoal over the unsheathed flame of the kerosene lamp, until it smokes and crumbles a little when he rubs it against the small piece of scratch wood, striped with black lines from where he’s sharpened the charcoal prior. It’s easier for Charles to drag the stick over his eyebrows, following their curves and filling in where Moira has blanched them with the foundation, and while he does so she moves to the side to begin mixing his lipstick.

“You’re quiet,” Moira ventures, keeping her back turned to give Charles space, to show him she isn’t pushing. “And tired.”

“I’m focused,” he says with a half-smile, satisfied with the thin black lines arching over his blue eyes.

“On your makeup, or that German?” she asks, turning to him only just and gauging his reaction. Charles schools his face into something impassive, wetting his lining brush with watery black ink and bringing it to his eyelid.

“Hush now,” he says quietly, keeping his hand steady and his back straight.

Moira sighs, and when Charles settles the lining brush back to the dresser she paints bright red paste over the swell of his bottom lip. “Just know what you’re doing,” she tells him. “I think Jean is worried.”

Charles tries to ignore her words, but he can’t.

For tonight he’s picked out one of the lighter kimonos Emma had gifted him when he first became a _geiko._ It’s meant for spring, with its deep turquoise silk embroidered with white cherry blossoms that fan across the material, curling over his ribs and reaching up to his heart, but Charles thinks it will be a welcome change for the evening - winter’s nearly over, and he tells Moira with a smirk that he’ll make the men excited for the new season. She only huffs at him and wraps him up, left over right, finishing him off with an orange and gold _obi_ like a ribbon on a present.

Jean’s wearing her perfunctory red and gold, with a deep green sash tight around her chest that shifts when she lets a sigh. Kitty is by her side, holding her already wrapped _shamisen_ in one hand and a hairpin in the other. “Come here,” she tells Charles, standing up on her toes to slot the intricate piece of metal into the folded bun of his wig.  

The pin sits well, and Charles feels the strings of white metal flowers swinging and chinking together when he straightens up. “Thank you, darling,” he says softly, rubbing the pad of his thumb on her supple cheek and catching his rounded nail on her skin.

“Good luck tonight,” she says earnestly, fixing him with a steady look.

The dinner is being held deep in the city and a half hour ride from the _hanamachi._ Their carriage is horse drawn, another Western commonality that has slowly crept over with war and trade and relocation. He stands for Jean to enter first, and only when he settles on the plush velvet seat next to her, and the driver has shut the door behind him, does she turn to Charles.

“I needn’t tell you this, you should already know,” she begins, tone just shy of severe and eyes hard. “Mother has made it explicitly clear that you’re to talk to _Shaw_ tonight. He took an interest in you: _I_ felt it, and so no doubt you did, too.” Jean settles back against the seat, turns her head to the window, and Charles is glad for it for a reason he doesn’t want to name. “I’ll stay with Lehnsherr tonight.”

“Of course,” he replies, mouth dry and lips itchy under the rouge. “I’m sure I won’t be confused again.”

As they ride, Charles lets his eyes shut and an easy breath loose from his chest, trying to exhale all the pent up anxiety the last week has built up within him and suppressing a yawn. Like a second heartbeat, his telepathy thrums deep in his mind and his conscience, and steadily and gently he lets it pulse out into the city as they pass through it. He fans his Gift, spreads it like a net, and whips through each mind outside on the streets around them, reading and seeking and searching.

t’s been so long now since Charles has felt Raven’s mind that he’s worried he’s forgotten what it’s like, even if all he has left is that one painful memory. It’s a concern that sits in his chest even when they pull up to the restaurant and he has to reel his telepathy in once more; what if he never finds her?

“None of that,” Jean says quietly, and even if her own telepathy is shaky and watery, she needn’t read his mind to know what it is that plagues him. Raven is no secret within their _okiya,_ what happened to her, and even Emma lets him scan the minds of everyone he meets to seek out some trace of her. It doesn’t make seeing Charles so upset any easier, though.

The restaurant is tucked away between a _ryokan_ and a small, less popular _okiya_ Charles doesn’t recognise. A small path winds from the street past a looming, shedded Acer tree to a small verandah that encases the front of the building. Charles can already hear men laughing within and smell the scent of sweet steamed buns hanging on the air. He tries a steady breath, his chest constricted by the _obi_ and shoulders a little sore from the weight of his kimono. He’s usually strong enough to carry through an evening without complaint, but his restless night hangs over him as if he’d only had too much rice wine.

“Come on,” Jean says, smiling at him wickedly with a wildness in her eyes and spurring him on. She leads the way down the gravel path, over a small bridge that crosses over a shallow pond. Hungry koi fish gobble at their heels as they walk over the bridge, their orange, white, and black scales catching the light of the lanterns and glinting brightly.

Their driver raps his knuckles against the wooden front door, standing aside to allow the two geisha into the entrance. The waiting servant alleviates Jean of her _shamisen_ before leading them to the main dining room. Charles doesn’t need to peek into the private rooms they pass to hear the drunken whispers, or to see pretty women in the laps of rich men; his mind seeps in through the rice paper walls and brushes over the soft and smokey inebriated minds hiding within, stretching in all directions like the legs on a spider, and he tries not to wince.

The main dining room is a large, open space, a long table stretched across the most of it with multiple cushions on the floor lining each side, occupied by businessmen and their own rented geisha. Expensive, tasteful artwork has been hung on the walls, and thin gold curtains frame the windows. Charles finds himself scanning the table on instinct, with one intrinsic direction to find one tall, smoky German.

When Charles spies Erik between Shaw and an empty space, he wonders how he could have ever forgotten him.

Like Charles had their minds tethered, Erik looks up at him and Jean, the lines of his face smoothed to a neutrality that melts away with his beaming smile once his eyes settle on Charles.  

Charles tries to keep the habit of not reading his clients, to save himself from seeing what they think of him with his small hands and his thick red lips, but he can’t help it now; the surface of Erik’s emotions light up like the shimmering golden scales of a koi fish, flashing and glittering and catching Charles’ eye. A secret little smile tugs at Erik’s lips. Jean’s watching him, Charles can feel it, and she takes a step onto the _tatami_ from her slippers and floats over to the table, trusting Charles to fall in behind her.

“Logan’s girls!” announces Shaw - blessedly still clutching onto sobriety - over the chatter, and the men all turn to watch Jean and Charles. In their routine symmetry and synchronisation, they bow to the table, and Charles tails Jean to the empty spaces next to Shaw and Erik.

The men stand to greet them, and Jean quickly comes to Erik’s side and throws a pointed glance to Charles. “Thank you so very much for the invitation,” she says to Shaw, voice like silk and eyes heavy, ducking her head in a quick bow before folding her legs underneath her and settling on the empty cushion next to Erik.

Brief confusion flits over Erik’s face for but a second, and he looks to Charles like he holds the explanation he seeks, before he too settles down and Charles takes Shaw’s side with a smile.

“I trust you’re having a good evening, Mr Shaw,” he lilts, praying his words don’t sound as sluggish as he feels, and Shaw grins at him. It’s nothing like Erik’s smile.

“Made all the more better by your company,” the American replies, passing Charles a capped bottle of beer to open.

He’s not sure why the action makes him grind his teeth behind his pleasant lips.

Across the table from him is a geisha from the _hanamachi_ over named Angel, who is entertaining the company of a burly Russian man - who looks a little sunburnt, if Charles is honest - and his quiet south American companion. Every time Shaw breaks from his own private conversation with Charles to talk business and travel with the Russian Charles doesn’t miss the way Erik’s attention slides from Jean to the group discussion. He hopes Jean doesn’t feel neglected, or worse, ignored.

When dinner starts and Shaw is busy picking at his gyoza, Charles lets his eyes slide shut for a moment, eyelids heavy with sleep and black ink. He’s startled back from the brink when from opposite him a gravely, thick voice breaks into the cloud of fatigue above Charles’ shoulders. Curse Erik and curse that dream. “These _hana-hanamatch,”_ begins the Russian - Azazel, Charles thinks - after ladling fat dumplings and their steaming broth into his own bowl. “What’s this term?”

Angel is pouring warm green tea into a cup for Quested, and so Charles glances at Jean and sits up a little straighter, busying his hands and opening another frothy beer for Shaw. “ _Hanamachi,_ ” he corrects with a smile. When he chances a glance at Erik from the corner of his eye the German is fixed on him, chopsticks still between his thin fingers. “It means flower town. They’re the designated geisha districts within the cities.”

“What a cute name,” Azazel remarks. “Befitting for the home of such cute girls.”

“Surely there are cute words in Russian, too,” titters Angel. “You’ll have to tell us.”

The man snorts, shaking his head and taking a swig of his beer. “ _Myshka,_ perhaps. Little mouse. Other than that, may as well be speaking German.”

“Hey,” calls Erik, affronted, furrowing his brow and forming a grin. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You know very well, kamerad.”

“We have cute words,” he continues, and Charles thinks that it is perfectly fine and perfectly acceptable for him to look to Erik now - everyone else in their posse is, and so Jean can bite on her words. In the low lighting emitted by the kerosene lamps, Erik really is quite handsome, with shadows catching in all the sharp lines of his face and the hollows of his cheeks and neck. Charles lets his eyes sweep over his face. He sucks in a hard breath between his teeth when Erik looks back at him, even with Shaw and Jean between them. His voice is quiet and smooth when he talks, accent thick. “For instance, _rabe._ ”

The Russian must know what it means, for he looks to Charles with a quirked eyebrow and with his   smirk hidden by the mouth of his beer. He mutters something back to Erik in Russian, and while Charles could easily dip into their minds and coil around translations, he can’t bring himself to go that far - especially when, from the way Azazel and Shaw and Quested are looking between Erik and him, Charles thinks he might already know. He’s sure the room is just too hot from the lamps, and he’s just stuffy and sweaty from his heavy kimono.

His attention is brought back to Shaw when he laughs and comments something idle, and Charles is trying to pay attention, he is, but his mind is foggy with drowsiness and his eyes keep seeking past the side of Shaw’s head to where Erik is quietly talking with Jean until his vision fuzzes and blurs. Their words are too soft to hear over the combined high decibel forces of Azazel, the men stippled along the table, and their tittering and chittering geisha, and Charles isn’t sure he could snoop like that on his sister.

Plus, he knows where Emma stands on his clientele. He also knows that Erik Lehnsherr is not to be a part of it.

When the beers have been accompanied by light green bottles of steadily emptying _sake,_ Shaw declares that Jean and Charles should dance for them, for they dance so well and so precise. Jean does have her _shamisen_ in settled in the corner of the room though, and Angel offers to play for them; Charles really has no excuse not to indulge the men, even if his vision whites and he can feel his head spin when he stands. A flash of concern comes from where Charles knows Erik is sitting, and before he can let himself react he casts the group his signature smile.

He manages a step before his knees give out on him, and his vision blanches once more as he slumps down onto the _tatami._ He can hear Jean’s voice through the cotton in his ears, distant and laced with concern, feel her fingers on his face; can hear the clattering of dishes on the table as they’re pushed aside, and one of the men saying something next to him; Charles’ skin tingles and prickles and burns, and he feels like he’s going to throw up-

Strong arms wrap around his middle and under his buckled knees, and in one fluid and swift movement Charles is being hefted from the _tatami_ and pressed to a firm, warm chest. He hears words like _fresh air_ and _outside_ and _I’ll watch her,_ and feels Jean press a thought to him, irritated by the stunt he’s pulling yet concerned that it _might not be an act_ \- and then there’s the slide of wood over wood, slats clattering together, that gentle voice vibrating in the chest beneath Charles’ cheek, and then finally the blissful relief of outside’s cold, clean fresh air washing over his damp skin and filling his sash-compressed lungs.

“Are you all right?” Erik’s words finally break through the haze in Charles’ mind, a little too loud, and when Charles opens his eyes and gazes up Erik is watching him with something worried swimming in his green-grey eyes. “Raven?”

Erik’s carried him outside to the veranda, and Charles can feel the confused, tipsy minds of the businessmen still inside wondering what’s happened, and there’s a servant standing by the door, poised and ready to intervene - but he clears them all from head so there’s room for only one.

“What happened?” he murmurs, sluggish and slow and naturally low, and only once he’s spoken does he bristle. Erik won’t pick up on it, he won’t-

“You fainted,” Erik tells him gently, shifting Charles in his arms. “I think.”

Charles can feel the quick rise and fall of Erik’s chest beneath his cheek, and that, combined with the embarrassment of _fainting_ in a room full of _patrons_ heats his face and burns it a bright pink. “I’m so sorry,” he squeaks, trying to shift out of Erik’s strong grip. The German only holds him tighter.

“Don’t be silly, you’ve been looking anxious all night,” Erik tells him firmly, and Charles tries not to think on _why that may be._ “Do you think you’re okay to stand? Should I ask for a chair?”

Erik’s just about to turn his head towards the servant and make his request when Charles palms at his chest and manages to squirm enough to get Erik to lax his grip. “I’m sure I’m okay, Mr Lehnsherr,” he says, almost frantic, because what if Erik’s hand slips down to his waist and he realises Charles’ hips are narrow, not built for childbearing, or if his hand slips across Charles’ chest and he realises there’s no swell of a breast under his kimono- “I’m really okay, a little tired is all.” He manages to wriggle enough to get a socked foot to the wooden floor before Erik relents and lowers him fully.

Erik’s not convinced, and when Charles wobbles on his feet his hands come lightning quick to Charles’ shoulders, steadying him and soothing his thumbs in small half circles over his collarbones. His head swims again, eyes shutting on instinct, and when his palms find Erik’s chest and push against it he can hardly bring himself to mind how vulnerable he’s being.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Erik asks, ducking his head down to look into Charles’ eyes.

With Erik so close to him like this, it’s impossible for Charles to answer without lying. “I’m sure,” he says anyway, gritting his teeth against another dizzy spell and then laughing incredulously. “Look at me - I’m so sorry, Mr Lehnsherr, I’m being so improper.” If only this _was_ an act, because then he could at least _try_ not to be such an embarrassment to himself and his _okiya._ Emma will cuff him across the head when she finds out- 

“Stop apologising,” Erik says, and it sounds like a command. Charles feels his knees weaken for an entirely different reason. “We’re human. These things happen.” He rubs Charles’ shoulders gently, and Charles watches him nod to the servant. “Though in such an intricate and hefty kimono, I’m sure you and your geisha kind are more than.”

Even now, he’s trying a joke. Charles can’t help a breathless grin.

“Well, I thank you for the compliment, even if I don’t look the part to receive it.”

Erik stills a moment, and when Charles look up at him again he’s biting the corner of his lip. “Was that- was that inappropriate of me? To carry you like so in front of all those men?”

Charles’ heart flutters behind his ribs, all of its own accord and to his irritation. “Perhaps; but it seemed necessary, and I thank you for your actions.”

Erik pulls a strange face, but it vanishes quickly and Charles notes it down as a quirk. “Should I get Jean?”

Charles can feel a faint thumping beneath his palm; he realises his hand is over Erik’s heart. “No,” he says quickly, and maybe a little too loud. “No. I’m truly okay, and I know you can keep good conversation.” Charles isn’t sure if the tops of Erik’s sharp cheeks dust with a faint pink, or if it’s just the hue from the lanterns around them.

The servant returns carrying a small wooden stool, which she settles behind Charles, close enough for Erik to simply guide him down into it, and as stubborn as he is he can’t deny how good it feels to sit down. How it felt to be in Erik’s arms, however…

When Erik is satisfied that Charles is settled comfortably on the bench, he straightens, staring out across the small garden and not meeting his eyes. For all the German exudes confidence and surety, Charles thinks that these little hidden moments are what make up some deeper part of the man’s personality; but he’s sure with time he’ll learn more of him. The hollow clinking of the wooden wind chime draped from the corner of the verandah fills the silence between them, until Erik clears his throat, turns back to Charles, and musters up all his snarky, suave confidences.

“Then, I’ll keep you company,” Erik decides with a gentle smile. Charles has to strain his neck a little to look up at him from where he looms, but it’s worth it. “I must admit, I was a little surprised to see you take to Sebastian tonight. I’m glad I can have your time now, I hope that doesn’t sound too selfish.”

“Were you looking forward to seeing me, Mr Lehnsherr?” He bites the inside of his cheek. He’s used this line a hundred times with other clients; it’s nothing to be read into.

Erik’s eyes gloss, something calculating in the way he gazes down at Charles, and the geisha can see when his jaw twitches from being clenched too tight. “Have you forgotten my name already?” the German asks instead, evading and ignoring. “So you use my surname?”

Charles huffs. The bench is hard underneath him, but he can feel his head start to clear - only to be settled in a haze of _something else_ that Charles doesn’t want to name. “I’m not sure I ever could,” then, “ _Erik."_  

It surprises Charles how easy it is to fall into this once more. He flirts with his clients, he does it often, but never before has it been like this, felt like this; never before have his fingers twitched, his chest tightened, and his belly tingled with butterflies at the prospect of what this man might say to him next.

It’s new and strange and enticing; it’s addictive.

“There we go,” Erik says softly, and in the dim Charles can’t be sure but he thinks he sees the German’s eyes settle on his mouth.

“I should tell you,” Charles begins, and Erik’s eyes flit up and settle on his own. “I was meant to go to Shaw that night, just like tonight. Funny how it changes.”

Erik hums. “Perhaps I’m in luck, then. Is Jean as keenly invested in the workings of a steel mill as you seem to be? I’m afraid that should I be paired with her again I’ll bore her.”

Charles flushes, a little embarrassed at how eager he must have seemed that first night. He can feel Emma telling him it had been worth it, though. “It’s very difficult to bore a _geisha._ Don’t fret over it too much,” he says cheekily.

Erik raises a brow, eyes disbelieving. “You’ve obviously never discussed steel mills,” he says dryly, and Charles can’t help but loose a breathless giggle.

“We’re taught patience as _maiko_ when we have to have our hair brushed. Don’t underestimate us,” he counters with a grin, and he’s surprised at how _easy_ it is to talk so freely with this client. Instantly the smile slides away, and he feels like he’s said too much. This doesn’t seem like winning him over anymore.

“I’ll endeavour to remember that in the future,” Erik says softly. “Don’t blame me though, when you’re unable to stop Sebastian talking about business. I warned you.”

He utters quietly, through his grin. “I’m sure I could project my grievances to you.”

“Project?”

 _Shit._ Charles’ heart stops, and he flicks his wide eyes up to where Erik is frowning at him.

“If I frown at you enough, I’m sure you’ll feel my displeasure,” he tries weakly. Charles can feel Erik’s mind snapping from thought to thought, but he doesn’t skim the surface, too scared of what he might find. If he figures it out, if he figures it _all_ out Charles can just wipe his mind, they’ve always had this as an option, as much as he is loathe to it-

“I think I’m all right to stand now,” he starts, hoping to guide the conversation on and away from this. Clients aren’t meant to know of his Gift, of all their Gifts. 

He manages to push himself to his feet, and when he wobbles, despite his frown, Erik takes his arm. “Don’t strain yourself,” he says firmly, leading him over to the railing that skirts the perimeter of the verandah.

“Stop fussing so much.” He looks down at the garden before them, and then he realises. “We don’t have our shoes.”

Erik looks down too, then, at their socked feet on the wood, and when he laughs it’s clear and beautiful and makes Charles’ chest inexplicably tight. “We don’t. I’m sorry, I didn’t have a chance to grab them.”

“I’m sure I can forgive you,” Charles says lightly, and Erik seems to have forgotten about his slip up. “Though, I’m not so confident about Mr Shaw. He wanted his dance.”

“I don’t blame him, to be completely honest. You and Jean dance beautifully. You make a wonderful sight.”

Charles can’t help his blush at the compliment, and it’s strange, because he has men telling him how beautiful and elegant and talented he is often, and now, it’s different.

 _It’s because it’s Erik,_ a small, rebellious part of his mind whispers, and he tampers it down before the thought can be extrapolated upon by his independant heart.  

The German settles beside him, leaning against the railing and not meeting his eyes. “When you dance, it’s like you’re in each other’s minds,” Erik comments slowly, calculating, and Charles has to bite his lip. “I’ve heard of that,” he continues, tapping out a cigarette and offering it to Charles, settling it between his own teeth when he declines. “Shaw told me rumours of your _okiya,_ that the girls have been blessed with gifts most people go without.”

He bristles. Charles is used to conversations turning to this, to the rumours that cloud his _okiya_ in an air of mystery that so many of his clients wish to wade through. He should have _expected_ Erik to bring it up, what with his slip of the tongue just now. Where it would be easy to dissuade suspicion and ease conversation to another topic, instead Charles finds that his throat is tight and words trapped - Erik seems to inspire this kind of reaction, he’s starting to realise. So he grins, and takes Erik’s zippo from him to light the cigarette for him.

“How fantastic would it be to have one,” is all Charles says in a sigh, settling the zippo back into Erik’s still hand and turning to look over at the pond. He can feel Erik’s eyes on him. 

Erik takes a draw on his cigarette, blowing a steady stream of smoke before he speaks, and it makes his voice raspy and Charles’ spine tingle. “Or a hindrance; another thing to hide.” He says it like he _knows_.

“We shouldn’t have to hide amazing things,” Charles says after a moment, and to his own ears it sounds hypocritical and full of fallacy, and he tries not to flinch.

“No,” Erik agrees, and Charles can feel those cool eyes settled on him once more. “You think the Gifted splendid?”

Charles can’t help the way he bristles, but he covers it with years of training and years of his act. “I do.” He says it adamantly.

He can’t feel it, but he hears it; the metallic chink and clink of the hairpin’s threads of flowers nestled in the swell of his wig as it’s pulled from his hair. Erik’s hands remain lax over the banister with a cigarette between his knuckles. When Charles looks up at him he’s sporting a quiet smile, the pin levitating in the space beside his head. “I suppose that’s lucky for me, then.” He quirks an eyebrow and it makes Charles breathless.

“You’re Gifted?” he whispers, fingers reaching up and patting over the space Kitty had stuck the piece before he and Jean had left.

“I am,” Erik admits, floating the pin to his open palm and letting it settle there. “I can manipulate magnetic fields.”

Jean would slap him if she knew he did it, but the way Charles sees it she’s already going to beat him black and blue for the fainting stunt. “Don’t be startled,” he tells Erik slowly, bringing trembling fingers to his temple and searching Erik’s quizzical eyes before shutting his own despite his excitement and giddiness.

He’s never told a client, never told anyone outside the _okiya,_ except for the slavers who _knew-_

And now he’s letting in this German he barely knows.

 _Since we’re sharing - I am, too,_ he projects surprisingly steadily, and opens his eyes again to gauge Erik’s reaction. If he doesn’t take well to it, he can easily wipe his mind, can easily rectify this, Jean and Emma don’t ever have to know his revelation. 

“You are, too,” Erik repeats quietly, eyes wide and almost unbelieving. The cigarette burns forgotten, thick ash arching and falling to the gardens below. 

“It’s a secret,” Charles explains conspiratorially, and he can’t help his wicked smile at having finally caught Erik off guard. Excitement and nerves and _something new, something else_ coil tight in his chest and flutter low in his gut like butterflies.

Erik wets his lips, stubs his cigarette and stuffs the butt into the metal tin, and says, “Then we’d best keep it that way.” Something has changed in his voice and in his eyes, there’s something lighter in his chest that Charles can feel, palpable in the air around them. Charles wasn’t meant to share, and yet he did, and now they have a secret, and Charles bites his plush bottom lip because this can only be a doorway to more secrets and darker, wayward paths.

He half wonders where they lead.

They don’t speak for a moment, taking in each other, and Charles worries he’s made it awkward while Erik pulls another smoke and lights it himself, his hands cupping the flame of his levitating zippo. “Still, we shouldn’t have to,” he continues lowly, and Charles can’t help but be fascinated by the tendrils of thin smoke slipping between his teeth as he speaks. He wonders what his mouth tastes of; ash, or dirty and smooth and as addictive as nicotine?

“But alas,” Charles replies dryly, and Erik nods.

“One day, we’ll be accepted by the ungifted humans.”

He speaks with a determination that makes Charles a little cautious, so he rests his palm against the firm muscle under the arm of Erik’s suit and says, with something dawning in his eyes, “So is that why you started a _steel_ mill?”

He doesn’t miss the way Erik tenses under his hand, but he speaks steady and keeps his surprise hidden from his voice. “Perceptive,” he says, impressed.

“And how is business?”

“Perceptive and _inquisitive,_ ” Erik grins. “But I knew this from our last meeting. Our proposal was approved. We’re to have a factory on the coast in two years or so.”

Two years. “That’s so soon. I bet Mr Shaw is ecstatic,” Charles wonders. Erik shrugs, and a wave of his cologne catches on the wisps of the breeze and fills Charles’ lungs. 

“He’s glad. He’ll be staying at base in America and employing workers for here, however.”

Charles tries to plan his next words carefully, cautiously, so as to not give anything away. He knows this is dangerous, and he’s better off just idly commenting, or keeping his mouth shut, or _anything-_

But he can’t help himself.

“And yourself?” he ventures casually, and it feels imperative he knows the answer. Erik takes a drag on his fresh cigarette, and watches him pensively. Charles feels his neck flush with heat, his palms sweat, and he _shouldn’t_ have said a _word,_ he’s left himself _open-_

“I haven’t decided,” Erik replies eventually, his cigarette nearly burnt down to the filter when he does. “I’ve sure I’ll just have to see what my circumstances are at the time.”

He wants to say more, and Charles can see the words sticking in his mouth and flitting across the surface of his mind. _Are you worried_ is a quiet thought, and when Charles looses a surprised little noise Erik glances away quickly.

“That does make sense,” Charles says softly. “Will you come back before then?” Erik isn’t even meant to be his _client,_ he’s not supposed to _care,_ and he _certainly_ doesn’t need to worry about monetary reasons so what does it _mean_ that he _is_ still filled with concern- 

“Of course.” Erik settles his rolling thoughts with a grin, and Charles berates the way the man makes everything in his world break down with a look and rebuild itself with a flash of that smile. “I’ll be back in a month, to smooth out plans and talk to our benefactors, and whatnot.”

“It’ll be spring then,” Charles says lightly, heart fluttering between his ribs. “It’ll be beautiful.”

“I’m sure it will be,” the German replies, and his eyes are heavy and fixed on Charles.

Charles isn’t sure what’s happening, what this all means, what he’s even _doing -_ the fact he knows Moira would frown and Marie would click her tongue, Jean would smack him and Emma would glare only testimonies to the tightness in his gut that he _knows_ whatever’s happening shouldn’t be. He’s screaming at himself in his mind, his instincts kicking him, but he can’t help it. He beams up at Erik, and the smile Erik gives in reply is worth it all.

Talking to Erik is so _easy,_ and they cover _everything,_ from their own Gifts to Erik’s childhood and Charles’ time as a geisha, with Charles carefully navigating around _that_ corner of his past.Charles almost forgets it’s meant to be an act, that he’s meant to be talking from a script and not from his heart. The evening is late and Erik’s top buttons are open when Charles finally catches up with all the passed time and hides a yawn behind his fingers. “Surely you could sit on the verandah with me, and that wouldn’t look so improper,” Erik leers, trying anything to keep their conversation from ending. Charles doesn’t miss the unspoken surface thought that accompanies his words: _nothing you could do would look improper._ Sudden sobriety comes with a cold winter breeze, and Charles schools his face to something neutral and hopes Erik doesn’t realise he’s breathing hard. He wonderswhat the German deems improper; does a man dressed as a woman, with the intent to deceive count?

Despite it all, reluctance to leave settles in Charles’ belly, and when Jean finally emerges from the restaurant with their driver and an inebriated Sebastian Shaw in tow she casts him a glare so icy Charles is sure she learnt it from Emma; but regardless, he turns to Erik, and he knows their time is up. He won’t see him for another month, at least. The thought makes his mouth dry, and he’s not sure what to say without seeming desperate. 

“I’m not much of a talker,” Erik settles on, watching Charles’ red mouth and alleviating him of the task. “But you seem to have changed that. Thank you.”

“Then I’m glad I won the time and word of the illustrious Erik Lehnsherr.” He can hear Jean’s _geta_ clicking on the dark oiled wood. “When you return, it would be wonderful to know you’re keeping up on your social skills,” Charles teases, disguising the meaning of his words in plain sight that he prays Erik can see.

“I’ll definitely visit to exhibit the results of my practise. I hope I impress you.”

“A difficult feat, I should have you know,” Charles says low, and he knows Jean is walking to them but he can’t help but take a step closer, can’t stop himself from looking up at Erik where he stands a tall and solid line, can’t help the blush fanning across his pretty plump cheeks. “You’ll be back in spring.”

“How do you call it?” Erik starts, and he takes Kitty’s hairpin from where it rests against the banister, and slots it to the side of his wig, letting the fringe of flowers dangle down near his pink cheek. “The flower festival?”

“ _Hanamatsuri,_ ” Charles whispers, eyes shutting when Erik drags his knuckles lightly across his cheekbone before quickly pulling his hand back and stuffing it into his pocket. “I’d let you take the pin to remind you, but it belongs to Kitty.”

“I don’t need a momento to remind me of you, Raven.”

The blush recedes, the heat in Charles’ chest extinguished by the cold that seeps from Erik’s too-true and fallacy-shattering words into his bones.

Raven is the geisha. Raven is the telepath. Raven is the girl in Erik’s company, not Charles.

They shared one truth, but not all.

Everything Charles has felt hadn’t been real - how could it have been, when Erik’s sweet words and leering grins aren’t for him?

When Jean reaches them Charles is grateful because he’s not sure he can flirt around the lump in his throat. “Are you feeling better?” she asks, and Erik would say her tone is pleasant, while Charles knows it to be terse and impatient.

“I am,” Charles says, turning to her and touching her arm. “It was so good of Mr Lehnsherr to take me out and keep me company.”

“You’re lucky to keep the acquaintance of such a gentleman,” Jean says with a bow towards the German. “But unfortunately, our evening has drawn to a close.” She passes him his _geta._

Charles feels Erik’s eyes on his back as he trails Jean to the carriage. He chances a glance back, to where Erik stands and leans against the banister, and despite it all; despite the fact Erik thinks he’s a woman, despite the fact that if Erik ever found out it would be the end of his _okiya_ and his sister’s reputations, despite the fact it would ruin him for life: he can’t help but loose a smile. Erik’s answering grin is enough to keep reality at bay, to keep the fallacy fueled.

In the carriage he’s filled with guilt, because he couldn’t ever so selfishly destroy his family, can hardly let himself belief that for a split second he thought it would be okay to let that happen, for a _man._ Jean whirls on him as soon as the door is shut, boxing him in and asking _just what happened out there_ but all Charles can do is sigh, spin a lie, grin and pretend that everything’s okay.

He has a month to smooth Jean and Emma and Moira’s combined concerns. He has a month to forget his feelings; because this is just an infatuation, and it’ll pass, he’ll have more clients to fill the days and nights and with time he’ll never see Lehnsherr as more than money again.

But a month isn’t much time, and when the carriage pulls out into the street en route to the _okiya,_ he can’t help but glance back out at the figure on the verandah, haloed by the lanterns’ lights and fringed by the bushes of waking flowers and empty branches of acer trees. Charles can’t have feelings for Erik, he isn’t allowed to, and he prays they pass with the passage of time-

There’s a small part of his heart that knows they never will.

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

Where the two weeks had gone by without a thought, the coming month won’t be treated in the same manner. Charles accompanies Marie and Moira on their errands to the markets, and every man he sees that stands tall and dark against the crowd catches his searching eyes. When he grits his teeth and fans his telepathy out through the streets, looking for his sister, he can’t help but try to catch the cool mind of another, even though logically Charles knows the German is far away with oceans and lands and impossibilities between them.

His clients bore him. He doesn’t want to admit it, folds the thoughts away so Emma will never hear them, but when she tells him his booking schedule for the second week he can’t help the clench of his jaw. She eyes him over her abacus.

“This _okiya_ does not pay for itself,” she says sharply. “You may have paid your debt back in under a half year, but that doesn’t mean you needn’t work.”

Emma hadn’t been impressed by his fainting at the dinner, and she’d written an apology to Shaw herself. Charles had easily been able to attribute it to the weight of the kimono, the heated tobacco swilling in the room’s air, the drunk minds swaying his own and making him weak; she’d left it that, even though she’d known they were not the sole catalysts of his stunt.

Charles knows that if he had told her he’d not slept, that he was exhausted and overwhelmed and confused and _tired,_ the reason why would rise to the surface of his mind out of his control and Emma would know more than he should be comfortable with. He hasn’t even been able to bring himself to analyse it - he doesn’t need his Mother doing it and assuming the worst.

When a sweaty man with pink cheeks attempt to flirt with him, Charles can only laugh gentle and clear. No snarky, clever retort comes to his smirking lips, no quick quip or retaliation. He won’t think on what that means, either.

He slumps at the table during dinner, swirling the thick _udon_ noodles in their soup around the bowl with his chopsticks while Kitty chatters about her dance lessons and Jubilee prattles on about the cute errand boy employed by the bathhouse a street over. Moira asks if he’s tired, Marie asks if he needs more food, and while everyone else is oblivious to it Charles feels Emma’s piercing eyes cool and calculating and reading him.

She comes to his room late after dinner, leaving the girls to their cards, and Charles only looks up from where he reads on his _futon_ when she slides the rice paper door closed. The radio crackles and spits a foreign tune between them.

Her white kimono swirls around her as she steps onto the _tatami,_ puffing and fanning as she comes to settle beside him. “Are you thinking about her?” she asks gently, and Charles lets her take his hand.

“I always am,” he admits quietly, resting his book on his thigh. Emma hums and nods.

“You know I will forever be sorry I couldn’t save her, too.” Charles rubs his thumb over her thin knuckles.

“You did what you could, and more than I could have ever hoped for, Mother.” A lump settles in his throat, and he hopes she won’t expect more words from him.

“Is this why you’re so sullen? I won’t push you.”

She lets him rest his head against her shoulder and shut his eyes. He dozes with her fingers carding through the curls of his hair. “We’ll have to dye it again soon, your roots are almost as tenacious as you are.”

“Almost,” Charles croaks.

“Is this about Lehnsherr, too?”

“I don’t know,” is all he can bring himself to say. “He’s different.”

Emma hums. Charles can feel her telepathy shifting and coiling through the wispy tendrils of his own. “We all develop infatuations with clients, especially to the ones who show they respect us; to the ones who see us.”

“Will it pass?” He can feel his heart thundering in his chest. He wonders if Emma can feel it, too.

Her words are definite, solid and grounding. “It will. It always does.”

Something settles in his chest, and even though he feels empty behind his ribs Charles tells himself that he’s glad; he has to be.

*

With spring comes the _miyako_ _odori_ festivals, and when Charles strolls through the streets of the _hanamachi_ with Moira on his arm he can feel all the frazzled minds of the other geishas, holed away in the dance houses and their _okiya_ rooms frantically squeezing in rehearsals before the season starts.

“Don’t be too confident, Charles,” she tells him, leading them to a fabric stand and running her fingers over the silks. “It would be unfortunate to catch yourself up.”

“You underestimate me,” he says with a grin, smiling at the stall keeper from behind his fan.

The man doesn’t let them leave until Moira is clutching a bundle of soft yellow cotton under her arm, perfect for little summer dresses for Kitty and Jubilation.

Moira can only sigh, and cast terse glances at Charles while he smiles at her coyly.

The days tumble over into each other, filled with clients and errands and on one occasion, an evening-long argument between the two _maiko_ about who owns the emerald-embedded _obi_ clasp (it had belonged to Jean when she was an apprentice, Emma had deduced with a frown and thin lips. Kitty and Jubilee made up quicker than Charles had ever seen them do before). The passing of time has done little to abate Charles’ clashing feelings, despite whatever Emma, Marie, and Moira have told him, and so in the second week of spring when Marie hurries to the back verandah where Charles sits with the radio crackling, a thin cigarette pipe between his lips and a bucket full of suds and undergarments between his thighs, he’s hardly surprised at the way his heart stops in his chest.

She needn’t speak. His telepathy coils around her mind the way his smoke twists in the air. Marie’s eyes are wide, a telegram in her clenched hand, and all she can do is nod, thrusting her gloved fist out to Charles.

On shaky legs he stands and steps to her, his under-kimono shifting and swishing as he walks to where she stands just shy of the door. “He’s back,” says Marie. “He wants to see you." 

With a hitch in his breath and tightness in his stomach Charles glances over her shoulder, down into the empty hallway. “Now? Is he here?”

“Not this time,” Marie tells him lowly, in a warning, insinuation thick in her words. “Read it.” She pushes the telegram into Charles’ trembling hands, and he slots the cigarette holder between his lips.

_Erik Lehnsherr, in the company of his associates Henry McCoy, and Armando Munoz, is back in the country._

“Well?” Charles says incredulously, rereading the slip of paper with frantic eyes. “When has he booked me?”

“There’s no time,” Marie admits softly, taking the paper back and attempting to fold it neat. “I only received this just now. I ran to find you as soon as I got it. But, perhaps he has spoken with Mother?”

Charles shakes his head, taking a draw before settling his cigarette on a low table and flicking the radio off. He’s not sure what the feeling in his chest his, but he endeavours to ignore it. “I know,” Marie declares, taking Charles’ shoulders and squeezing. “Logan! He must have spoken to Logan!”

“I waited this long,” Charles says with a wry smile, watching Marie duck back inside to write a telegram to their friend. _I waited this long._

Marie is only their maid, having been too old to be sent off to school to become a _maiko_ when Emma bought and freed her, but Charles thinks she might understand him better than even Emma. Her Gift, which she regards as more like a curse, inhibits her in ways mirrored by Charles and his secret, and neither can get close to another, only finding solace and comfort in their family.

She serves as a reminder for Charles, and when he’s left standing on the patio with the windchimes knocking hollowly against one another and frogs and critters chirping in the cramped, bosky courtyard with its looming jacaranda and damp edges he remembers how much of a fallacy this is, how fake. Erik isn’t interested in _him,_ in a _man._ He wants the soft swells and curves that form the shape of a woman, with her long cascading hair he can run fingers through, gentle skin he can stroke and a light crystal voice he can listen to for hours and days. Charles can’t get close to him, can’t let this become _real,_ because he can give him none of that.

Erik is a client. Nothing more. Charles’ excitement quells and quiets, tapered down alongside his telepathy into an undeniable truth. He’ll see Erik when he sees him, and he won’t let this go further than it already has.

*

The _miyako odori_ festivals are one of Charles’ favourites, no matter how much of a strain they are on his tightly reigned telepathy. The main street of the capitalhas been strewn with paper flowers, and lanterns swing freely in the light breeze that carries thousands of cherry blossom flowers. They dust the cobbled roads and into hair, and Charles can’t help his grin when Jean hisses a curse and fiddles with plucking supple petals from the folds of her hard red wig as they hurry along in the rickshaw. He can feel a spike of similar annoyance from in front of them, where Emma rides with her two _maiko,_ and he can’t help but laugh freely when he sees an errant elbow jutting out as their Mother picks at her own hair.

“I’ll push you out,” Jean warns, glaring at him from the corner of her black and red lidded eye. “Don’t think I won’t.”

 _I give you full permission, Jean,_ Emma’s voice filters into all their minds.

Girls in bright pretty kimonos walk the streets on their wooden _geta,_ their fingers curled around cherry flavoured ice cones that smudge and smear their lipsticks in an endearing fashion. Ornate hairpins and combs dangle from their hair, swinging and fanning as they look around at the decorations and the blooming cherry blossoms, and Charles can’t help but smile at them. Hot pans sizzle behind the food stalls, men and women shouting their wares and offering bargains. They snake through the main street as they ride towards the theatre and its adjoining _ryokan,_ and Charles quickly fans his telepathy - when he draws it back in he’s caught nothing, just like any other day.

They’re brought to the back of the theatre, and the driver helps Emma down first before the others. Her white kimono shimmers when she walks, the silver seamed flowers patterned in the material catching in the warming sun and glittering almost magically. An attendant hurries over to them, leading them to the side entrance where pretty geisha from the other _hanamachi_ mill about and wait to enter. Charles tries to offer them a placating smile when the attendant leads Emma’s posse through first.

Emma’s _okiya_ has been booked for only a week while the festival continues on throughout the month, but in that week they’re to dance throughout the day, and while Charles is grateful to be chosen to be here the idea of having to dance four times a day, every day, makes him sag a little. Kitty loops herself around his arm, almost like she can hear him, and he can’t help but smile and sigh at her enthusiasm.

By the end of the first day of the festival he’s rubbing her tense muscles in the privacy of their hotel room, running hot washcloths over her arms and calves in an attempt to soothe the tight flesh. She just whines and slumps back on her _futon._

The second day, Jean is muttering bitterly to herself and biting her lip when Moira and Charles try to alleviate her of the cramp behind her knee.

Emma doesn’t dance in their groups - composed of their _okiya_ and other girls from the _hanamachi -_ having the stage all to herself in an allocated time slot in the evening. Being the owner of the house, Charles rarely gets to see Emma perform, but his breath stops every time he does, even if he’s only watching from the wings. When she dances he remembers being a child, newly purchased and frightened into silence, and watching her practise in the _okiya;_ remembers wanting to be that graceful and fluid and beautiful, remembers the way she held his small hand and told him _yes, you can do this,_

 _I need you to do this, on one condition._ The next day when Moira had wrapped him in her brightest little kimono and sent him off hand in hand with Jean to the dance schools, he’d taken his sister's name, and every day since left his own in the _genkan_ of Emma Frost’s geisha house.

Seeing Emma dance always brings up the parts of his memory Charles tries hard to suppress, but he supposes he can’t keep his past locked away forever. Watching her move almost makes him _proud_ to be a telepath, to be just like her.

Almost. 

On the final day of their scheduled week, Charles drags the girls from their rooms to breakfast despite their groaning, grinning wildly at them and missing Marie’s hearty meals. “Afterwards, we can walk through the street festival,” he says enticingly to Jubilee, nudging her with his shoulder and flashing her a smile. She bursts into laughter when she spies a flake of wet seaweed stuck between his teeth.

The dances require full attention by the geisha, and for all his skill and finesse Charles is not an exception to this rule. Before every dance he bottles his telepathy up, folding it away to be ignored for a while. With slow and steady movements there’s no room for mistakes to be hidden, and Charles lets nothing break his concentration, just like normal-

But as soon as he steps out onto the stage, he feels something’s different. The audience is dimmed, and Charles can’t see past the lights that beam from the foot of the stage, but he thinks he knows why, even if he won’t allow himself to dare to hope.

He told himself two weeks ago when he found out Erik was back in the country that he wasn’t going to let it hold any effect over him, that he wasn’t going to care, that Erik was to be seen as an income and nothing more.

If he dances with more grace and beauty than Jean’s ever seen him do before, it’s not because of anyone in the audience.

The hot feeling at the back of his painted neck doesn’t leave, even after the final performance of the day in the afternoon. Even with all the other girls on stage, it’d been like only he was being watched. He isn’t sure how to think of that.

Jean chooses out a pretty green kimono for him for their evening walk through the markets, securing it with a bright blue _obi_ and forgoing the wig to let his natural dark curls coil around his chin. He’s never left the _okiya_ without makeup however, and even now in the capital is no different. He colours his lips a tamed hue of red, lines his eyelids and dusts light green powder at the edges, and with a dab of perfume he’s Raven once more.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Jean says as he brushes her own long, natural hair, and he stills to look up at her reflection in the mirror.

There’s no point in lying. Jean would never delve, but she wouldn’t have to; he’s her sister, she knows him almost better than he knows himself. “I think Erik was in the audience.”

Jean watches his eyes for a moment before humming, taking the brush from him and pulling her soft hair into a neat bun atop her head, letting thin tresses curl freely around her ears. “Has your crush for him passed?”

“I hope so.”

“It’ll be okay,” Jean says lightly, and Charles picks out a pretty comb with a triangle of pearls embedded along the top to settle in her hair. “If you worry you’ll get wrinkles, and then he’ll love you no longer.”

Charles snorts and bats her shoulder before rising and walking to the door to the hall. “He’s not _that_ shallow." 

He’s still not told Jean, or Emma even, of his revelation to Erik of his telepathy. He wonders if they know, if they’d be mad if they did find out. He wonders if that would change the way they see the German.

Kitty and Jubilee are waiting for them down in the _ryokan’s_ entrance, and when Charles sees that even Emma is standing with them he can’t help his smile, and his worries are pushed away to the back of his mind. The girls are chatting enthusiastically with their Mother, and Charles is glad that she’s coming out with them and allowing herself at least a little fun.

“I have fun,” Emma says slowly then, affronted. The girls can only laugh at her.

Twilight is settling over the city, the sky a swathe of pinks and purples and orange that doesn’t hide the heavy, overcast clouds hanging above the girls and Charles as they walk out into the street. The markets are only a few streets away, but the bustling crowd makes it a slow walk to the stalls.  

Maiko and geiko that Charles recognises from the dances titter in their couplings to one another, in wonder at the splendour of the night gardens. Their long _obis_ swish and swing as they walk, the small _kamon_ crests on the tails elusive to Charles’ mind, but he’s sure it doesn’t particularly matter to which _okiya_ they belong. Emma lets them splurge at the _takoyaki_ stand, and when Kitty buys a small paper bag filled with sugar coated beans all Charles can do is give Emma a _you-started-this_ kind of look as he himself buys a little box of _botamochi._ Their Mother only huffs and carries Jean away, lest she be tempted by all the sweets for sale. 

Charles takes the girls to the side of a small canal, settling down on a bench under a shedding white cherry blossom to nibble on their treats and watch the lazy water. Jubilee is in the middle of a story when she stills, quiets, and her eyes flick over past Charles’ shoulder. He doesn’t need to flex his telepathy to know why.

“Mr Lehnsherr,” Jubilee says softly, ducking her head and rising to greet him. Charles feels sick. It’s been over a month, and he’s thought over when he’ll see Erik again countless times, and now _it’s happening_ and he isn’t sure- “What a coincidence, running into you here.” He can’t deny Emma taught her well.

Charles settles his dessert down on the bench, eyeing Kitty a moment before he too rises, turning painfully slowly and keeping his eyes lowered, because it’s been a month filled with denials and attempts to forget, a month of waiting and wanting and hoping, and everything Jean or Emma has said about his feelings passing wasn’t true, because now he’s flicking his eyes up and looking at Erik and his heart is aching more than it ever did before.

“Raven,” Erik says lowly, and it doesn’t matter if it’s his sister’s name, not when the German is looking at him like that.

“Erik,” Charles greets carefully, throat as tight as his chest. “It’s so wonderful to see you again.” He prays he doesn’t sound as breathless as he feels.

The charged space between them is filled with the carrying scent of cooked honey chicken and sweet rice, and something smoky, like incense. Charles takes the moment to look past Erik, where McCoy and another man stand, watching him with something almost understanding in their eyes. Charles keeps his telepathy tight to him, not wanting to pick up on thoughts he's sure he understands anyway without it.

“Excuse us,” Kitty says quietly, taking Jubilee’s arm and hurrying away to further down the canal’s railing.

Even with his telepathy under control, he still hears Erik’s thought clear as the water next to them. _She's just as beautiful._ When Charles blushes, Erik clears his throat and looks past him. “How have you been?” he asks stiffly. 

“I've been well,” Charles manages, his mouth dry and knees a little weak. Erik’s got a little bit of stubble dusting his chin. His grey suit is tight, and does nothing to hide all his strong lines and defined muscles. “And yourself? How was America?”

Erik nods, takes a step forward, and Charles doesn't miss the way his hand twitches like he wants to reach forward and hold Charles. “I've kept well. I must admit, I found America lacking in comparison to being here, but it was good to be home.” He takes another step, and Charles could touch him, could reach out and stroke his arm or kiss his cheek or even his mouth, and _damn_ this, damn himself for even thinking of the idea - Emma _told_ him this would pass so why _hasn’t it-_

“Is this how you’re telling me you missed me?” Charles wonders, clapping a hand over his mouth and gasping between his fingers when he realises just what he’s said. Erik’s face blanks, momentarily caught off guard, and he can’t _flirt,_ they aren’t _alone,_ and McCoy is looking at him strangely now-

His words seem to break something between them, though, and Erik smooths his face into something more suave than the shock that had come over him just now, and he tilts his head and smirks. “Perceptive, as usual,” he comments quietly, like they’re sharing a secret, and whatever nerves he’d held before seem to float away down the canal’s current. “You danced beautifully today, but I wouldn’t expect any less from you.”

 _Relief -_ a surprising surge of warmed relief washes through Charles and makes his knees weak, makes him almost want to cry, because nothing has changed and Charles finds that he is unapologetically _glad_ that it hasn’t.

“Thank you for your compliment,” Charles murmurs, even though he wants to sing out, wants to laugh and sob, probably simultaneously, but instead he only nods to Erik’s company. “And your associates? Are they enjoying the festival?”

Erik seems to remember himself then, stepping back and fixing his eyes on Charles’ face. He gestures to the men. “Hank McCoy, whom you have met, and this is, Armando Munoz.”

“The illustrious Raven! Your performance was amazing,” says Munoz, stepping forward and taking Charles’ hand lightly. “The streets are so busy and lively during the night markets, it’s almost energetic.”

Charles offers them a gentle smile. “Perhaps I can show you the best stalls to eat from? You must try the _yaki imo._ ”

“It would be an honour to have such a high ranking geisha at our side,” Munoz declares loudly, flashing Charles a grin and offering him a curt bow.

Charles can’t help a giggle. “I’m sure if my _okaasan_ heard you say that, she’d scoff.” He presses a thought to Kitty, not far away from them, to take his nearly-forgotten sweets and to tell Emma he’ll be out late tonight.

“Really?” implores the American. “But Erik speaks so often of you, I thought you must be the best in the country.”

When Charles looks to the German, he thinks he sees a blush high up on his cheeks.

“We wouldn’t be keeping you?” Erik licks his lips, eyes past Charles. “From a client? Or from your own personal errands?" 

Charles finds himself saying the words with a drifting mind and a lightness filling his chest with every breath. “You never could.”

The sun sinks deeper below the horizon as their posse head back into the heart of the festival, and Charles spends a moment to coax mousy, quiet McCoy into a conversation. He’d never thought being an accountant would lead to world travel, and Charles tells him he’s lucky to have seen so much of the world. “Without the benevolence of Mr Lehsnhserr, I couldn’t have been so fortunate,” McCoy says quietly, and when Erik casts a sharp glance back at him the boy squeaks. “Only good things, sir.” When Erik smiles it’s full of teeth, and it makes Charles’ chest tight.

The roads have been closed to rickshaws and carriages to accommodate the on-foot traffic, and now as night settles they fill with young girls and businessmen and peddlers trying to sell their wares. Charles stands at the mouth of such a street, wondering if it’s even navigable between all the bodies.

“It’s a little busy,” chuckles Munoz, and Charles hums. “Is this food worth it?”

“It is,” Charles decides, and he hopes Marie won’t chastise him too much for his gluttony.

With a determination for baked sweet potatoes and a tingling sort of pride nestled behind his heart, Charles steps out into the street, only to squeak and still when he feels a cool hand sliding into his own. “I’d hate to lose you,” Erik says from above him, voice low and clear, and it’s been more than a month but Charles still feels the same, his heart is still beating fast between his ribs, his throat is still tight, and oh, he’s really not sure why he thought this would ever pass.

“Of course,” Charles tries to tease, tries to say it light and coy, but he can't help but notice just how _big_ Erik’s hand is. His mouth goes dry, and he tastes metal on his heavy tongue.

Hank thoroughly enjoys street food they find, wolfing down a carton of _yakisoba_ and devouring the small skewer of sweet potato balls Erik finds the funds for with a playful sigh and a pointed look to Charles. “They didn’t stand a chance,” Charles titters. Erik rolls his eyes. 

“For all his timidness, McCoy is a _beast_ when it comes to food.”

Erik’s hand is still gently holding onto Charles’, their fingers slotted together easily. _To stay together,_ Charles reminds himself, staring down at where they’re linked with wide, almost disbelieving eyes. He’s never held a man’s hand before.

They leave Armando and Hank in the queue at a red bean sweet stall when Erik declares he needs a cigarette. Charles leads them down a small side street, finding privacy between two dilapidated buildings, hidden from the bustling crowds just metres away. When Erik lights his cigarette he uses his powers. Charles’ eyes are trained on the zippo, watching as it settles down into Erik’s palm. The quiet between them is too heavy.

“I got your telegram,” Charles starts carefully. Erik ducks his head as he takes a draw. “You didn’t book me.”

Nervousness flitters from Erik, a tense anxiety Charles can feel even with his telepathy tucked away. Erik scratches the bridge of his nose, watching Charles through the wispy tendrils of his tobacco smoke. “I wasn’t sure if I’d be welcome to.”

“By me, or by Emma?”

“Both,” Erik admits. “We don’t have anything like _geisha_ in America, or Europe. You’re entertainers, I know for certain. But I couldn’t be sure if everything was an act.”

Charles isn’t sure himself, the lines blurred and obscured and almost too easy to ignore. “Are you a jealous man?”

Erik considers this. “No, I don’t think I am. But I like certainty; I like to know where I stand. So when I came back, I talked to Logan.”

“And what did he say?”

Erik takes a long draw on his cigarette, watching Charles’ blue eyes as he blows a steady stream of smoke. “He told me geisha flirt, but they reveal nothing.” 

“And what did you make of that?”

Erik doesn’t answer him.

They mosey out into the crowd, and this time Charles takes Erik’s hand with his eyes staring straight.

It’s only handholding, Charles thinks to himself. It’s crowded, and they could lose each other, and Charles is short even in his _geta,_ unable to see above the heads of the people around them. The light, airy feeling filling his chest isn’t because Erik has warm hands, a little rough from work, a little big curled around his thin fingers. It _isn’t._

When someone knocks into Charles’ shoulder in passing and he stumbles a little, the way his heart pounds in his chest isn’t because Erik pulls him close, then, reaching to steady him at his waist; isn’t because when Charles tentatively skims the surface of his mind he finds Erik’s in _shock_ because he’d moved like it was an _instinct_ to protect Charles. Charles hopes his smile doesn’t appear to be as watery as it feels. 

They eventually find McCoy and Munoz slupring down bowls of steaming noodles and dumplings under the shelter of a gazebo, and it’s then that the heavy, overcast clouds finally wring themselves of their cool rain. It starts as a gentle pattering, and the blank look of surprise on Erik’s face when a fat bead splashes on his nose makes Charles crack and loose chesty laughter he’d never exhibit in front of a client. He’s cut off when rain hits his cheek, dribbling down to his jaw, and then it’s Erik’s turn to laugh, and when he does it makes Charles’ knees weak.

“We’d best hurry,” Erik tells him when his laughter subsides, leaning low so Charles can hear him over the disgruntled noises of the dampening crowd. “Where are you staying?”

“A hotel a few streets away,” Charles tells him. “And you?”

“Other side of the city,” Erik replies through a crooked grin that makes Charles breathless, and for as slow as the month crept along it’s like Erik never left, not when Charles’ eyes catch in all the lines of his face he feels like he’s known for years.

“Then we’d better hurry,” he manages, dragging his eyes away from Erik’s mouth, and Erik takes his hand again, settling his fingers between the spaces either side of Charles’ own.

Charles isn’t sure how the German manages it, and he suspects it must have something to do with his Gift, but the crowd parts around them just subtly enough to go unnoticed to unsuspecting minds. By the time they emerge into the refreshingly clear space of the mouth of the street, the rain’s spitting heavily, splattering dark marks against Charles’ kimono and wetting the long curls of his hair. Erik’s gelled hair is beginning to lose its hold, and Charles realises he has a slight fringe. He realises it’s rather endearing, and that he’d like to know how it feels pushed back between his gentle fingers.

He would be worried for his makeup, and in the retrospect found in the lonely silence of his bedroom Charles realises that he probably looked a mess - thick tan streaks breaking his white mask, the rouge on his lips worn away and caught in the dried cracked edges of his mouth, and the black liner traced around his eyes probably smeared - but at the time, when Erik had grinned down at him like they were teenagers, with no restrictions and no inhibitions, no duties or secrets, it hadn’t mattered.

Charles leads the way through the streets, hurrying around rapidly shutting food stalls and twisting around frazzled and yelling men, sticking to the sides and finding shelter under the thin awnings of houses and shops. “Raven,” Erik calls, and Charles throws a glance over his shoulder at the German, stilling and using the moment to catch his breath. When Erik pulls his hand away from Charles’ grip, something cold spikes in his chest, something pained and full of worry that he’d overstepped, that he’d tried to take more than he was given-

But then Erik’s fingers fly over the buttons on the front of his suit, and he shrugs out of his blazer, stepping swiftly to Charles’ side and settling it over his shoulders. It smells of cologne and something heady and intoxicating, warmed by Erik’s body, and Charles feels a little dizzy. “Your kimono,” Erik explains with a nod, and Charles is _trying_ to pay attention, trying to keep his eyes on Erik’s, but without the blazer the rain is spitting against Erik’s tight white blouse and turning it opaque in patches. Charles can see the muscles in Erik’s arms shifting beneath the cotton when he brings his arms back to his sides, slotting their hands together once more. Charles can only nod, not trusting his voice, and when he finally, _finally_ manages to drag his eyes back to Erik’s face he finds something knowing in his smirk.

The _ryokan_ is only a street away, and overcome with the itching notion to lead Erik the wrong way, to take him down a private little side street only to giggle and realise _it’s the wrong one_ so they’ll have more time together, Charles realises he isn’t ready to go back yet; back to the girls, where Kitty and Jubilation will prod and poke and Jean will click her tongue and Emma will only watch him, giving nothing away. They’ll ask him, “And have your feelings waned?” and he’ll have to lie through a sheepish smile and put up with their teasing about the German for at least a week.

Erik’s fingers squeeze his gently, whether knowing or on instinct Charles can’t tell. Something whispers in his mind, _aren’t you lying now?_ and he grits his chattering teeth as best he can, blames the sudden chill prickling his skin and settling in his bones on the rain. He’s not sure which lie would be worse.

Charles sticks to the route and brings Erik to the _ryokan,_ and as tall and safe and as warm as it looks, Charles can’t bring himself to want to leave Erik, even if they’ve had all night together, and even if he’s shivering in his sopping kimono. He’s not sure he could ever bore of the German’s company, even if it is only spent running through the city streets in the rain. The awning is thin, and Erik has to press close in order to be sheltered by it.

Charles doesn’t have to delve into his mind to know Erik doesn’t want to leave, either. _We don’t have much time,_ he wants to say, because he can feel the servant on the other side of the door ready to swing it open and share their moment with the entire hotel.

There’s a thousand things, proper things, that Charles knows he should say. Prettily strung sentences that are heavily guarded and give nothing away, made up of words like _thank you_ and _have a good night_ and _be safe;_ but Charles just can’t bring them to his lips, can’t get them out of his throat. He knows they could never measure up to what he feels, and he doesn’t want to lie to Erik any more than he has to. The rain pours in thick rivulets from the gutters lining the roof, filling the heavy silence between them.

There’s a thousand things Charles should say, has been taught to say, but Erik isn’t a client now, Charles isn’t entertaining and teasing and flirting and set on convincing men to buy him, and he thinks that this mightn’t be an act anymore. “When can I see you again?” Erik finally asks, so close that Charles could bring his hand to cup his cheek and bring their mouths together, if he so wished, and he thinks that maybe, he might-

“Whenever you want,” Charles tells him, and he means it. “The _hanamatsuri_ festival begins in a week-”

“I didn’t forget,” Erik interrupts quickly. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t forget you.” 

 _Me, neither,_ Charles thinks. He can feel the warmth radiating from Erik’s body, can smell the mix of burnt tobacco and cologne and heady sweat when he breathes deeply, slowly, trying to regulate his rapid pulse but only serving to heighten it on Erik’s scent. Almost chest to chest, Charles could just reach up, twist his fingers in the hair at the back of Erik’s head, it would be so easy, he could just pull him down, down down down-

The door swings open inwardly, and when Charles snaps his head to the side he finds Emma standing there, eyes hard and clear as diamonds and fixed on him. Erik pulls away sharply, almost knocking his head against the low awning. He stands rigid, stock still, eyes flicking from where Emma glares at Charles to where Charles stands, mouth a tight line.

Charles’ telepathy is too strong for him to ever be able to fully suppress it, and so when Erik pushes a thought to him it’s impossible to ignore: _I’m sorry._ Emma’s glare fixes on Erik instead, and Charles tries not to wince.

“Thank you for accompanying me tonight,” Charles says quickly, before the silence can stretch and become irremediable. He pulls Erik’s jacket from his shoulders, already missing the heavy warmth it provided, thrusting his arm out.

“Of course,” Erik says, voice thin, and with a polite nod-bow he takes the jacket and hurries down the front steps of the hotel. The rain is heavy now, and but even through it Charles can see the look Erik throws back at him where he stands haloed by the doorway’s light, pausing by the gate before he hurries down the street. Charles doesn’t miss the thought he projects, of _I’ll be in contact,_ and Emma doesn’t miss it, either.

Charles tries to ready himself for her quiet rage. His preparation makes little difference.

As soon as he follows her into her rented bedroomshe turns on him sharply, kimono wisping around her thin body.

“He knows,” she says steadily, and Charles bites his lip. “How does he know you’re a telepath?”

“Mother-”

“What have you _done,_ Charles?” Her fingers curl into a tight, white-knuckled fist. “Just what have you done?”

Charles bites his lip. “He only knows about me, everyone else is safe; he won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

She scoffs. “And under what incentive is he keeping your secret, I wonder?” Charles immediately recoils at her words, flinching and taking a step back, and in an instant her mind shifts from sharp jagged diamonds so something apologetic, warm open and fluid. She shuts her eyes and rubs her temple, sighing in exasperation. “Forgive me, Charles. I didn’t mean that.”

He’d never hold a grudge against her, but his cheeks still burn and his heart still sings with anger. It takes all he has not to spit his hurt words. “He’s Gifted too, Mother. He understands.”

She lets another heavy sigh through her thin nose before stepping forward and taking Charles in her arms. She smells of her jasmine, but the scent doesn’t seem so catching and comforting any more. When she pulls back she strokes her thumb over his cheek. “Your feelings haven’t passed.”

Charles’ mouth is dry, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Not _yet_ ,” he tells her, and he hopes she can’t see through his words. They hold none of the certainty he attempts to coat them in.

Charles lets Emma hold him for a while, some of the charged space around them settling into a comfortable quiet. “I received a telegram from Alex,” Emma says. “He thinks Raven might be north - there was an account of a woman seeing a man change his form right before her eyes.”

Charles’ mouth is dry for a completely different reason.

“That’s all I know,” she continues, fingers catching in the wet stringy tangles of his hair. “But he needs more money. With Kitty and Jubilation soon to debut, we’re running tight. The German could be good for us.”

She kisses his forehead and holds his waist for a moment before ushering him off to the washroom downstairs. He’s trembling, breath thin and wobbly, and when he stumbles into the bathroom he lets himself sink to the floor. Adrenaline is still charging in his veins, but it begins to wean down, everything from the day finally catching up to him - Erik, them together under the awning, Emma’s insinuations and glares, Emma’s revelation, _Raven-_

It was only a sighting, not even of Raven in her true form, not even of anything really depending on the reliability of the woman’s recount. It’s simultaneously nothing and _something_ , an empty clue, a flimsy hint; a dangerous hope to have. He hasn’t seen his sister in ten years. She could be dead for all he knows; she could still be enslaved.

Yet Summers needs more money. Spies rarely find casual, legal, cheap employment.

Erik - could he do it? Could Charles use him like a fund, for a sister he hardly remembers?

The fact he can’t bring himself to guiltlessly think _yes_ is answer enough for the state of his emotions.

Emma’s words itch under his skin no matter how hard he scrubs at it, no matter how much he tries to forget it them, let them splash against the back garden when he casts the dirty water to the rain-wet ground. Just what has he done? Would he have let Erik kiss him had Emma not interrupted? Would he have kissed Erik himself? And could he still use him if they _had_ kissed?

Only the steady trickle of rain dribbling from the gutter and splashing on the rocky courtyard fills the space now, everything smelling fresh and damp and earthy. Charles spits a curse to the quiet, still air.

Everything’s changed. This isn’t Charles winning over a customer. This isn’t planned, scripted, a lesson that Charles studied and practised and embedded in his mind. Erik thought of him. Erik _missed_ him.

And _he_ missed Erik, too. He thought of him every day, imagined them meeting once again, got stuck daydreaming about him on more than one occasion.

He’s on a precipice, and Charles can feel the dizzying mess of broken lies around him, stacking up and accumulated like the beads on Emma’s abacus. There’s nowhere for him to go- just down, further and further into his fallacies. 

He knows he needs to end it, as soon as he can. Charles won’t use Erik, and he can’t let these feelings go on. He’ll see his regular clients, and he’ll save up, and he’ll pay Summers in that way; no broken hearts, no tangles of lies to get himself caught in. He’ll end it before it goes too far, because the running seam of fear in all of Charles’ clients that niggles and nags at him is that _one day_ someone will find out the _truth -_ thatRaven of Frost’s _okiya_ is a man. It would ruin everything - the geisha house, his sisters, his Mother, and himself. He’d have nothing with which to find the real Raven, and then he’d have to see the betrayal and shock and anger plain on Erik’s face, and feel it searing in his mind no matter how hard he’d try to keep his telepathy supressed. That would hurt more than cutting him out, Charles is sure.

Regardless of whatever is in Charles’ heart, it’s not worth the risk. It’s not.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Matsuri_ means festival in Japanese, so every time I had to write '-matsuri festival' I had a 'Moon Moon' moment otl


	4. Chapter 4

They arrive home to the open arms of Moira and Marie the following day, and the day after that, a telegram arrives that Marie holds with shaking hands. Sat for breakfast, every girl stills with ceramic soup spoons frozen before their parted mouths and looks to her, keeping their eyes from flicking sneakily to where Emma sits at the head of the table to gauge her reaction. With a sinking feeling Charles realises that they all probably know what happened that night at the _odori_ festival, probably all heard Emma through the thin rice paper walls. He slumps on his cushion and watches his swirling _miso_ broth with resignation.  
  
“Out with it,” Emma says eventually on a sigh, giving Charles a pointed look he tries not to heat from.

Marie licks her lips, looks from Charles to Emma and back to Charles before settling on telling the table. “It’s from Logan. Erik Lehnsherr would like to invite Charles to the _hanamatsuri_ festival the day after tomorrow.” Charles thinks he might hear Jean sigh, but she hides it well. “He’ll pay in advance.”

Emma settles her spoon atop the small bowl and brings her hands to her lap, tipping her chin just so, in one fluid, fear-inducing movement, and everyone flinches. “May as well start a tab for that boy,” she drawls. “Charles can go.”

He wants to be excited. But when Charles looks up and catches Emma’s eye, all he feels like is being sick. He can’t use Erik- he _can’t,_ but he’ll have to. Emma’s never pushed him on clients he doesn’t want to take, and he knows she’d never do that now with Erik, but in a way, Charles can’t help but feel like he owes her this.

 _The German could be could for us._ He owes it to all of them; Emma, who bought him when she could have easily left him to be sold off as an exotic slave, the girls sitting with him now who accepted him as their brother _and_ their sister, even ungifted Moira and trapped Marie. They put time and effort and money into him to make him the esteemed geisha he is now.

“Thank you, Mother,” he says quietly. Despite his uneasiness he finishes his sweet egg roll and his miso, if only so he needn’t talk on the subject any longer, and listens to Moira titter excitedly on which kimono she’ll pick out for him.

*

Charles isn’t sure what he feels when the day arrives, a strange mix of excited apprehension and regret swirling under the tight _obi_ wrapping shut his plush pink kimono. Kitty, chattering away excitedly, slots her hairpin into his wig, pressing a kiss to his white cheek and squeezing his shoulders, and Jubilee chitters and dashes some sort of scented oil all over him that Moira grouses about. It’s strong and heavy and thick, smelling oddly of warmed wood and spice. It does little to calm him, if that is even meant to be the purpose.

When there’s a resounding knock at the front door the girls silence, eyes trained on the stairwell to the first floor with breath bated. They hear Marie’s footfalls on the stone _genkan,_ the scrape of the door over the floor, then-

“Mr Lehnsherr,” Marie says lightly, and Erik mirrors her deep bow. From his vantage point Charles can only make out his side, but his heart thunders all the same, all the worries of the past few days climbing up on his shoulders and making his chest heavy.

“Come on,” Moira whispers, and he’s kick-started back into motion. She rubs a soothing circle across his back before pushing him off, and with his chin high, eyes downcast and shoulders a straight line he descends the stairs, and floats down to where Erik is waiting for him in the entryway.

When his eyes settle on Erik, every concern seems to melt away, and when a light-eyed smile creeps across Erik’s face Charles’ heart is thundering for an entirely different reason. The money, the secret - it drifts far away and is easy to forget, especially when Erik’s looking at him like that and his thoughts are so _loud,_ full of things like _beautiful_ and _clever_ and _gentle._ All his self-derogatory beration, all his grit teeth and tense muscles and anger at himself and his treacherous heart, it all just pushes to the back of his mind to never be drawn on until Charles finds himself in the overbearing quietness of retrospect.

For now, though, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, because Erik is smiling at him and it’s doing something wild to his heart.

 _You behave now,_ Marie presses to him, revealing nothing on her face. Charles steps down into his _geta,_ and even with the blocky wooden sandals Erik still has a head over him. If Charles were being Charles and not Raven, it might make him grouchy, but the height difference makes him a little giddy instead. “Good morning, Erik,” he greets, and he’s only breathy because of the tightness of the _obi,_ he’s _certain._

“Raven,” Erik says lowly, his voice a deep rumble that rises from his broad chest. He’s still taking Charles in, eyes unabashedly raking down his pink kimono and catching in that familiar hairpin and settling on the prettily made up white-red-black of Charles’ face.

“Shall we go?” he ventures, because it seems like Erik’s brain has momentarily shut down, and Charles thinks he might giggle and his ego will over-inflate and burst. He’s almost too scared to skim the surface of his thoughts, afraid of what he might find; if he might blush as pink as his kimono.

“Of course,” Erik says a little dryly, bringing himself from his ogling and glancing around the entryway instead. “The festival isn’t far away, and the weather is fine, so I thought it might be good to walk; if that’s fine with you, naturally.”

His thoughtfulness makes Charles want to bite his lip. “I’ve walked with you in worse conditions, have I not?” he says easily, and he thinks he might see Erik blush.

Erik follows him out onto the street. There’s a gentle breeze that rustles through the full, heavy branches of the trees above them, catching leaves and carrying them in gentle spirals to the street the pair walk down. The quiet between them is filled by the distant shouts from the markets, the clopping of horse’s hooves on the stony roads, and the clicking wheels of rickshaws as they whiz past. It’s companionable silence - Erik by his side, looking out anywhere but Charles even though the geisha knows where he’d rather leave his eyes to settle. 

“Did you make it back to your _ryokan_ safely?” Charles asks eventually, never being able to handle quiet for too long. Erik grimaces, and even that is handsome.

“I was so wet they didn’t want to let me past the entrance,” he grouses, lips thin and quirked a little at the corners. Charles can’t help it - he laughs, clear as crystal and hearty, and initially he feels cold shock emanating from the German before he too looses a chuckle. “I suppose it’s funny,” he continues, scratching his nose. “I had to strip down to my undergarments right there in the _genkan._ ”

“All that suffering in order to take me home,” Charles drawls, looking up at Erik and startling a little to find him already gazing down at him. “You’re a fine gentleman.”

Erik makes a sound part way between a groan and a grunt. “I’m not sure the little old serving lady shared your assessment.”

Charles laughs again, their arms brush, and he remembers where they left off, on the doorstep of the hotel with inches between their mouths and Emma Frost haloed by the lights of inside, glaring brighter than any of them.

Like Erik is the telepath, he asks, carefully navigated and calculated like so much of what Erik does is, “Was Ms Frost mad that I had you home so late?” He coats the words with something joking, laces a seam of causality through it that Charles picks up on and plucks and does without. He knows well enough what he’s trying to say.

“She was just worried for my kimono, being out the rain as I was,” Charles lies easily, and even though it’s small and meaningless it still makes his mouth itchy to spill the truth; _all_ of it. “Your suit jacket helped protect it. She was very grateful.”

He doesn’t miss the unconvinced look that flits across Erik’s face, before the German lets the side of his mouth quirk upwards. “Maybe now she might like me a little more.”

“She might have you book _her_ next time.”

Erik laughs. “Don’t tell lies, Raven.”

Charles tries to swallow the cold lump in his throat. “Then I suppose I should say she was simply worried that I’d gotten lost in the streets somewhere, out in the rain and catching a chill, which would put her out of pocket. 

“You must have many clients; Logan told us that the geisha he kept in his company were among the most prestigious of the Flower Town.” Again, Erik says his words carefully. Charles licks his lips and tries a shrug.

“I suppose. It’s not so bad, though, and we have to make a living _somehow_.” It doesn’t feel like the right thing to have said, and Charles doesn’t have to brush Erik’s mind to feel the flare of _something_ aching a little there.

“So you see clients as money?” the German ventures, accent thick, and he pulls his cigarette tin from his jacket pocket to distract himself. Charles swallows thickly, remembers Emma’s words and shakes his head.

“Our housemaid would have my neck if I smoked in a kimono,” Charles says softly when Erik offers him the tin, and he watches as Erik uses his Gift to light up once more. It surprises him that he’s so open about his powers, especially when Charles himself is quite the opposite. “But no. Do you see your employees as simply cogs in a machine?”

Erik takes a draw and nods to that. “Point. My apologies, I hope that wasn’t rude of me. 

Charles smiles up at him. “I’m not sure you could ever be rude. You’ve always been kind with me, even if that means running in the pouring rain with only a thin blouse.”

Erik sucks a breath between his teeth, clicking his tongue. “Even when you mistook me for Shaw." 

Charles blushes a little, looking down the road at all the little girls in their bright kimono and the boys in their humble _yukata._ “I’m sorry for that. You must have thought me careless.”

“Never, Raven.” The strength in his voice makes Charles look up at him, his throat tight. “Don’t be sorry. We might not be as good of friends now, had you not come to me.”

“I’m glad I did, then,” Charles admits. He can already smell the sticks of _yakitori_ cooking away in the festival’s food stalls, and his stomach twists. What Marie doesn’t know won’t hurt her. 

“I’m very glad you did, too,” Erik replies softly. Their arms brush again, and Charles catches a fleeting thought in Erik’s mind - an image of them, walking arm in arm down to the festival - and then something like impropriety, and to Charles’ surprise _shyness._ He never thought Erik _shy._ It’s endearing, and Charles’ heart swells in his chest.

Casually, with his eyes fixed on a lantern hanging from the shopfront they pass, he slides his arm into the crux of Erik’s, where it juts with his hand in his pocket. The action brings them closer, their sides almost touching, thighs pressed with the thick kimono and expensive suit between them; they’re so close Charles can feel when he stiffens, almost tripping over his own feet, and can hear the rasp in Erik’s breath when he takes a deep draw on his cigarette. 

“Is Mr Shaw still in America?” Charles wonders, and he can feel the heat from Erik’s body even through all the material between them. Erik’s cologne is heavy, threaded with wisps from his cigarette, and the scent settles nicely in Charles’ lungs when he takes a deep, steady breath.

He wouldn’t think it possible, but Erik manages to pull him closer, and Charles can feel each line of the man’s’ ribs where he’s tucked Charles’ arm to him. It makes him feel lightheaded. “He is. He’ll be managing from America from now, and I’ll be handling matters on this end.”

Charles’ stomach twists again, but he knows it’s not with hunger; excitement flits along under his skin. “Does that mean you’ve decided to stay here?” he asks slowly. Erik takes a final draw on his cigarette before stuffing the filter back into the tin, which he levitates by his chest.

“I haven’t made a certain decision,” Erik tells him. “But I did miss this country when I was away. I can think of a few reasons to stay.”

Charles thinks he might know what they are.

“Well, I’m not sure I’m much of an influence on your business matters, but I hope you stay.” Was that too forward? Too risky? He bites his lip, and reasons that if it’s something Emma would slap him for saying, then he should just keep his mouth shut-

“You hold more influence than you might think,” Erik murmurs. Charles can feel his voice vibrating in his chest.

They come to the crowd milling in front of the garden’s gates, and when an attendant spies the _kamon_ printed on the tail of Charles’ _obi_ he lets them into the vast garden ahead of everyone else. Cherry blossoms line the main path, branches heavy with pink petals that catch on the breeze and float down around them. Vendors are pedalling sweets, and Erik buys them both a pink rice cake that’s been shaped into a small flower. “It’s almost too pretty to eat,” he muses, staring at it incredulously on the small sheet of card. “We have nothing like this in Germany.”

“It’s all cakes, right?” Charles brings his free hand to Erik’s abdomen, patting his hand on the tight muscle and trying not to shiver. “Careful now, we wouldn’t want it to show.”

Erik raises an eyebrow at him. “Eat your flower.”

The trail leads to a grand temple Charles has frequented many times before - as a child, to pray for his sister, and even now in adulthood when he has a free day and too many thoughts. Erik’s never visited prior to today, and Charles lets him take his time just gazing at the temple, at its many tiers and its slant-shingled roofs all supported by thick columns of faded red wood. Charles walks them to a small running fountain, where men and women kneel and pour clear water over their handles from long ladles. Erik watches in a kind of reverence, eyes glazed over in memory. Charles can feel it warm in his mind, but doesn’t intrude.

“Are you Buddhist?” Erik asks quietly afterwards, when they’re standing by the large bells as people make their prayers and give their offerings.

“I think I am. I think you have to be something, in order to survive in this world. Everyone needs hope, but people like us, especially,” Charles says carefully. “Would you like to make a prayer?”

Erik shakes his head, and pulls Charles closer to his body, their sides pressed against one another. For a second Charles worries someone will recognise him, recognise the insignia on his _obi_ as Frost’s, and they’ll run rumours around the _hanamachi-_

But then Erik sighs quietly, a small noise that Charles thinks sounds a little vulnerable, and he doesn’t like it one bit. He lets his head press against Erik’s shoulder, and he shuts his eyes to the crowd around them, focusing only on the way Erik breathes deeply and steadily, his thumb stroking a fan over where Charles’ sleeve slips below his wrist and reveals his skin. Erik’s voice is far-away, lost and dreamlike and soft. “Your perfume is geranium. My mother wore geranium oil.”  
  
“Only good memories, now,” Charles says quietly, and Erik twists their fingers together.

“You’re making it one.” 

Charles walks them to another stall selling shaved sweet ice and buys them both one, paying with a pretty little smile. “You’re a deviate,” Erik mutters, once they’re sat down on a small bench under a shedding white cherry blossom, one of the many weeping around the gardens.  
  
“The thanks I get,” Charles sighs, spooning a small heap of the ice into his mouth. They’ve untangled their arms, but still sit close, and Charles feels calmer than he has in a long time.

More people have started to spill in from the streets to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday, toting their families and loved ones behind them, and Charles thinks they’re lucky enough to have found an empty seat so quickly. They sit in comfortable, friendly silence for a little while as they eat, and Charles snorts when he notices that Erik’s lips have been stained a bright pink. The German doesn’t seem to notice, eyes surveying the bustling festival-goes.

“All these minds,” he wonders, looking out over the crowd. “Doesn’t it get too much? Too loud?” His tone turns serious. “Do you need me to take you away?”

The sheer strength of Erik’s concern is making him light headed. “To be honest,” Charles starts, and he’s tired of lying, tired of half-truths and the chain-and-ball of fallacies he drags behind him wherever he goes. This is shy, gentle, confident Erik, and he can trust him with anything; anything but the prevalent, poignant truth. This will have to do. “I usually keep my powers locked away.”

Erik stills. “Locked away?”

“In here,” Charles says, tapping his temple. Erik’s eyes are heavy and pensive.

“To save yourself a headache?”

“That,” says Charles slowly, and he knows there’s no going back after this, no retracting his words. “And I don’t… I don’t really like being like this.”

Even with his telepathy folded away, Charles can still feel the confusion, and almost-anger that flares quietly behind Erik’s eyes. “You said you thought the Gifted splendid.” Betrayal - betrayal is what’s nestled in Erik’s mind. It makes Charles feel suddenly cold, suddenly so misunderstood it almost hurts.

“And I do think that,” he tries to remedy, turning to Erik fully and ignoring the people passing around them. “Just not for me. I…” He wets his lips, looks over Erik’s shoulder, before forcing himself to look up into his hard eyes. “Telepathy can be a curse. Being Gifted is a reminder of darker things; darker times.”

Immediately Erik’s eyes soften, and when he brings his hand up to Charles’ face and strokes his thumb across his white cheek, Charles can’t help but lean into it. He’s never said the words out loud, not even to Emma, for fear that she’d take offence being telepathic herself. It seems he’s said enough to make Erik understand, however. “We can’t let the darkness of the past dim the brightness of our futures,” he says gently. “We’ve lived in the shadows too long to restrict ourselves to them. With those eyes, you were made to shine.”

Charles looses a wobbly sigh, skin warm. “Only good memories, now,” he reiterates, more to himself than anything, and he tries to push Raven, the day they were separated, and the way her mind had sung and clung to his to the back of his head.

“Finish your ice,” Erik says gently. “Then we’ll take a walk around the gardens. I’m sorry I pushed.”

“I think I needed it,” Charles admits, sniffling a little and pulling away from Erik’s touch. “You’re so proud of your Gift; I envy you.”

Erik hums, swirling the cherry syrup through the slush of ice in his cup. “I wasn’t always like that. I had to learn.”

“Do you think you could teach me?” Charles ventures, trying a weak laugh and blinking back the wet from his eyes.

 _I would do many things for you._ Erik doesn’t press the thought, but Charles hears it anyway, and instead of warmth swelling in his chest there’s only a dead, weighted cold that settles in his gut; Erik _means_ it, but he means it for a clever girl named Raven, and not a pretty boy who’s only skill is acting. Erik would do anything for him, and all Charles is giving in return is a lie.

“I’m sorry,” Charles splutters, looking down at his own quickly melting shaved ice. “I made this so emotional.”

“Please don’t be,” Erik says, voice warm. “I’m humbled you feel you can open up to me.”

“You’re just so suave and charming,” Charles jokes, finishing his ice. “It must be your foreign German wiles.”

Erik grins, taking Charles’ empty cup to a bin by a vendor. “We’re such a persuasive people.”

The walk through the gardens does prove to waive away Charles’ upset, distracted as he is by the man at his side and the beautiful flowers blooming from the bushes and falling from the branches overhead. All around them is a sea of pink and white and purple and baby blue, a background for the girls in their vibrant kimonos. The path leads them through a canopy of _sakura,_ and when the petals catch in his wig and Erik’s hair, Charles can’t stifle his giggle. 

“Stop laughing at me,” he grouses, mussing his hair in an attempt to shake loose the soft pink flowers. “Do you feel better?”

“I do,” Charles says in a giggle, reaching up to brush a stray flower away from the German’s hair. “Your suffering delights me so.”

“Careful now,” Erik warns. “Sadness is the shadow of joy. There’s always loss to be felt in the wake of happiness,” he says, carding his fingers through the strings of soft pink cherry blossoms hanging from the trees around them and watching them scatter to the footpath. “That is why it’s never good to be too happy, even if it is at the expense of devilishly charming German entrepreneurs.” He finishes with a sly grin that makes Charles’ chest tight.

“And yet you’ve not stopped smiling all afternoon,” Charles covers, teasing and light. He relishes in the small spike of excitement at having caught Erik out; the German promptly schools his face into an impassive, calm neutrality. “I wonder what that means.”

Erik clears his throat. “The allure of the forbidden will make a masochist of any man.”

A thread of flowers catches in Charles’ hair, and when Erik reaches down to casually pluck them from his wig, the smirk slips from his lips in tandem with a gentle gasp, and he wonders if Erik can hear his thundering heartbeat. Erik stills, eyes heavy and locked on Charles’ parted lips, then sweeping over his smooth skin and round jaw with his fingers lingering by his cheek. Everything from the night on the _ryokan_ ’s doorstep comes back. The cherry blossom curtain offers them little privacy, but surely no one would notice, surely no one would look twice if Erik were to slide his fingers across Charles’ throat, if he were to lean down, just a little bit further, yes, like this, just a little bit more…

No. Charles takes a careful step back, flashing Erik a forced, coy smile before turning and continuing down the stone path. He doesn’t turn or wait, using the momentary solitude to suck in a breath between his teeth, to shut his eyes and steady his mind. He’s playing with fire. He’s one of the most prestigious geisha in the _hanamachi_ , and if someone were to see them embracing... If the rumours got back to _Emma..._

Emma wants him to use Erik, and he can’t, he could never do that. He thinks he might love the German too much for that.

The sharp clicks of expensive oxford heels track over the path, and then Erik’s at his side, sliding his arm into the crux of Charles’ elbow, no shyness, no apprehension. When Charles looks up at him, he’s staring forward out across the gardens and the patrons, watching the husbands with their wives, the businessmen with their own posse of geisha and maiko following them in clouds of jasmine. Charles can’t read him. 

“I’ve upset you.”

Erik’s muscles tense under his arm. Charles leans a little closer, presses their bodies together a little tighter to make room on the path for others to easily pass by.

The German’s voice is quiet, warm, and holds a conviction that makes Charles’ heart race and ache simultaneously. “I’m not sure you ever could.”

Emma’s words come back to him as they always do, haunting and imposing and reminding him of his lie, and he tries to push her from his mind, distracting himself with an easy glance to Erik. “Where did your handsome smile go, then?”

Erik’s surface emotions are as pink as the cherry blossoms floating around them, and Charles knows he _can’t_ flirt with Erik, knows it’s too dangerous, because the truth is his shadow and no amount of makeup can hide that; but he also knows it’s almost impossible to stop, especially when Erik stumbles over his feet in a shock that Charles is sure only he has the power to elicit.

Charles has kept the company of a hundred clients, but he’s never felt like this. He can make men weak with a look, can sway their hearts with cherry red smiles and sweet honey words. It’d always been fake, though, always scripted, always what the client wanted to hear and never really what Charles wanted to say. The excitement of breaking the rules is intoxicating.

“I’d make all these pretty flower wilt,” Erik eventually grouses. His suited thigh brushes a cluster of hydrangea, and the purple and blue flowers scatter in a gentle poof around his leg, catching in his pockets and shoe.

“You’ve already made this one,” Charles says casually, double-sided and slick, grinning as Erik flicks petals from his trousers. The German quiets after that.  
  
Charles leads them to the bridge, which is bowed in a small incline over a thin stream that runs and winds throughout the gardens and ends at the temple’s fountain far behind them. Fat orange koi fish gobble at the water, the hungry circles of their mouths gaping at the surface in search of feed. A young couple is leaning against the banister and each other, mouths soft at cheeks and necks and ears, and for an angry second Charles is filled with an inexplicable jealousy that makes his chest tight. 

He chances a quick glance to Erik from the corner of his eye, to find him staring out across the lush green lawns and into the snow-capped mountains that fill the horizon, slow to catch up from winter to the new, warmer season. He’s pensive, Charles decides, concluding also that it’s a handsome look for the foreigner; not that any expression he might wear wouldn’t be. Eventually Erik reaches into his breast pocket for his cigarette tin, and when Charles, with his eyes still fixed on the koi thrashing in the water, slides his hand into the front pocket on his trousers where he knows Erik keeps his zippo, a thousand sirens blare in his head. He couldn’t care for them any more than he could care for who sees them.

Erik’s thigh is as firm and taut as Charles might have ever expected them to be, and he hears Erik suck a shallow breath between his teeth and around the fraying filter of the thin cigarette between his teeth. Charles turns to him with nothing but a casual smile pulling his lips, lights him, and slides the zippo back snuggly into his pocket. Erik never looks away from his eyes, and Charles finds it suddenly very, very hard to breathe.

Their silence stretches on, comfortable and yet now full and charged with something dangerous, something out of Charles’ control. Second-hand tobacco smoke settles heavily in Charles’ lungs, and makes him warm and a little dizzy. When Erik speaks his words are heavy and his voice is raspy and dry. Charles doubts it’s from the cigarette alone. “When can I see you again?”

“My schedule is clear next week.” Their arms are still linked, Erik’s body a solid line against his side.

Erik shakes his head, sucking the dregs of his cigarette into his lungs. “Sooner than that.”

“I’ve clients on the weekend. I can push their appointments back.” Erik stubs the cigarette on the banister, and slips the crumpled filter back into the tin.

“Sooner,” he insists, and Charles bites his lip. He’s had clients urge him for visits before, and he’s always apologised with full lips and sad puppy eyes that Emma wouldn’t allow him to do that, that it’s out of his control, that he’s so terribly sorry, will you ever forgive me?

But this is Erik. 

Emma definitely wouldn’t let him, no matter how much he pushed.

“Tomorrow night, Jean and I are performing for a banquet in a restaurant across the _hanamachi,_ ” Charles admits quietly. “I can get your name on the list; a pseudonym, of course.”

“Wonderful.” Erik’s accent is thick, and a shiver chases down Charles’ spine to his hips, settling in the space between them. “Tell Ms Frost I’ll have you booked for the entirety of next week.” Erik suddenly stills, Charles looks up, and finds the German watching him in such obvious earnestness that it makes his heart ache. “That is, if you’d like to.”

“I truly would, Erik.” _No -_ he can’t _use_ Erik for his money, he can’t _see_ him anymore. Charles’ head feels fuzzy, his skin buzzing hotly under the orange and gold fabric of his kimono; he’s getting _too close,_ this is going _too far_ and getting _too real--_  

Years of trained self-restraint melt away when Erik beams down at him, something warm curling in his grey eyes like smoke. Charles is sure if he so much as looked at a _shamisen_ he wouldn’t even know what it was let alone what to do with it. He hears Emma yelling at him.

“Day or night?” he asks, dragging his gaze back to the stream, because he’s quite sure he could stare at the German for hours if left to it.

“Both,” Erik says through a dirty smile, and Charles can feel he hasn’t looked away but can’t help the grin splitting his lips. “I still haven’t seen all of your _hanamachi._ I’d be privileged to have a local guide me through the town.”

“So you can seek out the other _okiya_ and sample the company of the pretty geisha they house?” Charles teases.

“No matter the girls’ beauty, it could only ever be a downgrade of the company I’ve been finding myself in, and favouring, as of late,” Erik says easily.

Charles huffs a breath and hides his grin behind a careful hand. He’s being _so_ unprofessional, he’s sure Emma would have an aneurysm to see him like this… and yet he can’t bring himself to stop, can’t bring himself to berate the way his skin tingles, to deny the thundering of his heart or fold away the butterflies in his belly. Not that he’s ever had to - no client has ever broken him like this.

“You must have a weakness for self-indulgence, Mr Lehnsherr,” Charles titters. “I’m very expensive. You must watch your pockets.” The rational part of his mind hopes that his words will shake Erik from this daydream, of keeping him for a week, so Charles can say at the end of all this that his intentions were pure, that he never wanted Erik’s money - because there _will_ be an end to all this, Erik will find out the truth one day - but his heart is thundering at the prospect of being with Erik so often.

“Once Shaw and I get the company settled, I could afford you every day, for a year.” He stills then, and looks out back at the water. His words are quiet, but none of their damage is softened. “I could sponsor you, should you want it." 

The dreamy haze in Charles’ mind clears, and his mouth is suddenly too dry and his hands too clammy. Reality is a slap in his face and a cold stab between his lungs. Erik seems to notice Charles’ sudden apprehension, because he nudges him lightly, covering it as nothing more than a simple, innocent and casual leaning into. Charles tries a smile, and tucks his concern deep at the back of his mind where his telepathy lives.

“Much too expensive,” he says quickly, dismissively, shaking his head. “Emma is planning on putting the price of my sponsorship up.”

Erik simply shrugs, satisfied with Charles’ response and suspecting nothing of the panic behind his eyes and in his throat. “I’d better start saving, I suppose.”

They stay in the gardens til the late afternoon, stopping for tea by a small stand and feasting at the night markets that line the streets on the way back to the _okiya._ If Marie knew how many sticks of _takoyaki_ and _yakitori_ Charles had picked at he’s sure she’d faint, or smack him unrelentingly. She’d make him live on miso broth for a week to ensure he still fit into his kimonos. When he voices this, Erik seems to miss the sarcasm, for he looks at Charles aghast and with such shock Charles can’t help but laugh at him. It doesn’t help that a small grain of rice has stuck to Erik’s bottom lip from his onigiri, and Charles wonders idly if it would be too forward to kiss it from him. 

He settles on swiping his thumb over the persistent grain and flicking it to the street instead. A bashful red tinge brushes the tops of Erik’s cheeks and replaces his concern with something much prettier, and something that makes Charles’ heart swell tenfold.

Charles’ waist aches from the weight of wearing his _obi_ so tight for so long, and his shoulders are tense from the heavy kimono he wishes he could just shuck right then and there; but the worst inconvenience is when after all their idle meandering down roads and alleys, Erik eventually leads them arm in arm to the front gate of his _okiya_ and turns to him with a low sigh that makes Charles shiver. “Tomorrow night,” Charles reminds him, slinking his hand down Erik’s forearm to his palm, sliding their fingers together and giving a brief, reassuring squeeze. Then he pulls his hand away like they never touched, expression schooled to reveal nothing.

Erik swallows, his eyes flicking over Charles’ face. He notices when Erik’s gaze settles on his lips. “Max Eisenhardt. Use that name for me.”

“I can do that for you.” 

They’re silent for a moment more as they gaze at each other, before Charles offers him a bow. “Thank you for your company today,” he says crisply.

“No, thank you,” Erik replies. He’s still watching Charles’ mouth. “Good night, Raven. Sleep well.”

Inexplicable pain flares in Charles’ chest. That’s right, though, isn’t it? He’s Raven, isn’t he? He isn’t Charles. Erik doesn’t buy the company of Charles. The truth shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.

Moira’s waiting for him in the _genkan_ when he steps inside, and with the sudden emptiness in his chest and tightness in his throat he wishes she weren’t there at all. “Charles,” she hisses dangerously, and all Charles can do is wave her off, sliding out of his unrelenting wooden _geta_ and into the yielding comfort of his house slippers. She tails him to his room, and promptly begins work on the drum knot of his _obi_ while he sits and rubs his temples.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Charles sighs before she can speak. She tugs at his knot with too much force.

“What was going on out there by the gate, Charles?” Moira asks, a seam of hysteria lining her words. “He was going to kiss you. He was going to _kiss you_ , Charles, I saw the way he was looking at you." 

“But he _didn’t_ ,” Charles interrupts, “And he _won’t._ I won’t let him.”

“Yes,” Moira grouses. “He’s so lovesick you could tell him to walk into the middle of a busy street and he’d do it without a second thought because it’s _you_ asking.”

Charles sighs, settling his wig on the dresser and combing through his hair, damp with sweat. “Was Emma mad?”

“You missed _dinner,_ of course she was. Lehnsherr didn’t have you booked that long,” Moira crows, yanking the kimono from his shoulders after she folds his sash into thick squares.

“I’ll pay the difference then,” Charles says, finally letting irritation seep into his voice. It’s not held against Moira, however. He knows from where it stems.

Charles can feel her thoughts before she says them, and she presses her palms against his shoulder blades through the thin material of his _nagajuban,_ resting her forehead against the nape of his neck.“I just don’t want you to get hurt, Charles.”

 _Too late._ “He’s booked me all next week, I’m bringing in good money.” _Not for Raven, he can’t use him, he cares too much._ His words hold finality and come from a gentle smile, perfect and fool proof and lesson-taught. “I know what I’m doing.”

She doesn’t have to know that it’s a lie. 

*

The next day when Charles tells Emma of Erik’s plans to book him for the week, the empty stare she fixes on him is almost scarier than her rages, and Charles half wishes she’d loose her anger and frustration, if only to see some kind of emotion on her face. The air in her office heats and thickens, and he’s almost too scared to suck in a breath lest he break the tense silence in any way. For a second Charles thinks he sees her purse her lips, thinks he catches something dangerous glistening in her eyes for only a moment, but then there’s nothing. Even her thoughts are subdued and untouchable, unreadable. 

  
“Is he serious?” is all she asks, dry and flat and full of static, stagnant anger. 

Charles offers her a lazy shrug in reply. “He seemed it. I’m not sure why everyone is so loathe to him, you especially. The money- the money will be good. For Raven. You said so yourself, he’ll be good for us.” It’s all he can say to convince her.

Charles thinks he might hear her fountain pen creak between her fingers. He swallows the lump in his throat. It’s a long while before she speaks again, and her words reveal nothing of what plays behind her eyes in her thoughts. Charles could never bring himself to read her. “What you’re so ignorant to notice is dancing in front of all of our noses, banging a drum like we’re at a _bon_ festival.” She scratches something in her diary, flicking the abacus with her thin fingers. “No touching.” _I trust you know what you’re doing, Charles._  

He bows when he rises from the _tatami,_ turning to leave with folded hands. Before he steps from the office, Emma calls, “You’re not to talk to him after the banquet tonight.”  
  
A wry smile twists Charles’ lips. “To leave him wanting?”  
  
“Yes, let’s call it that.” Emma raises an eyebrow and waves him away.

He wonders if he can keep that promise.

Charles has no doubt that Emma had spoken to Jean prior to them leaving for the banquet, for all night she watches him like a hawk, making sure he never strays from the side of the delegate he’s been assigned too. The conversation with the man is dry, no matter how much he tries to joke and tease and quip, and he can feel a headache start to bloom behind his eyes. He’s too used to Erik, he thinks, pouring more _sake_ and uncapping the beers being thrust in his face.

Charles can’t see him anywhere on the table, but he knows the German must be here. Tentatively, and after he takes a deep breath, Charles flexes his telepathy, and when Erik’s mind sings brightly to him he sighs all the apprehension and anxiety away.

After he and Jean dance, he catches a thought, loud and shaped with that same curling accent. _You were beautiful, as usual,_ Erik presses to him, and when he blushes he pretends it’s because of some silly string of words the drunk delegate slurs at him.

When the man ends up inevitably slumping on his cushion and dead to the world around him, and Jean helps another businessman heft him up, Charles takes his chance to slide over to where Erik sits chatting amicably with a burly man sporting a mane of frizzy hair. “Drinks?” Charles says quietly, making to pour _sake_ for the other man, already knowing Erik will decline. He reaches across the table smoothly to where the pot of green tea is warm on its placemat, filling Erik’s cup and watching as something gentle and knowing fills the German’s eyes.

“Thank you,” he purrs, taking a careful sip. He can feel Jean’s eyes hot on the back of his neck, but gives her no attention.

The frizzy-haired man doesn’t leave, or quiet, or even include Charles in his conversation, apparently holding some disdain for geisha that makes Charles purse his lips. Even without Jean or Emma’s intervention he doesn’t have a chance to talk to Erik privately, and he thinks that maybe it’s for the best.

“What are you doing?” Jean hisses when they’re out in the hall, eyes aflame and searching for some kind of _reason_ in Charles’ own. “Leave Erik alone. Just leave it alone.”

“Because you never did this,” Charles scoffs, back against the wall. Even though Jean comes to height against him, she’s still older, still his big sister, and he’d be lying if he said he weren’t a little ashamed at having her anger and frustration aimed at him. Yet, his fear doesn’t still his tongue 

Her eyes search his, flicking rapidly back and forth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says eventually.

“What was Logan, then?”

Jean gives him a pointed look that says _that’s beside the point_. “Emma needed the money. But I never forgot my duty to the _okiya_ when I was with Logan. I never stopped being in control.”

“She needs the money now,” Charles hisses, curling his hand into a white knuckled fist and closing his eyes tight. “She needs to pay Alex to find Raven. She wants me to use Erik.”

Something softens in Jean’s voice. “And you can’t do that because you love him.”

It sounds strange to hear the words aloud, out in the air instead of safe in his own head. They’re true now; they’ve been said.  “At the flower festival, I couldn’t stop thinking how _wrong_ it all felt.”

“Have you kissed him?” Jean asks, glancing down the hall where the men are still sitting and drinking and laughing. “Charles, have you kissed him? 

“ _No,_ ” he snaps, glaring at her. “This isn’t as out of my control as you might think. 

She clicks her tongue. “But you still love him. You want to be with him but you don’t want to use him.”

“What do I do?” he asks, voice quiet and small. She doesn’t answer for a long time, time enough Charles thinks he should skim her mind to find what’s wrong, but she just sighs, leaning against the wall. “Jean?”

“You end it. It’s the merciful thing to do. You can never be together, you know this. And if - _if_ \- you can be together, he’ll find out about Raven, about needing the money, and he’ll leave. Men’s egos are fragile like that.”

“If I explained-” he tries, but she silences him with a look.

“Emma doesn’t like Lehnsherr based on the sole premise that he _likes you,_ and you like him, too. I don’t understand her a lot of the time, but I know that if you ran off with him it would destroy her. We’ll find the money for Raven, we’ll take on more clients - Emma would rather we see Erik off than we see the inside of his coin purse, anyway.” With every word something cold and angry settles in his chest, and Charles can’t look at her, lest she see the wet in his eyes.

“And what of Scott, then?” Charles leers. “You got to have him.”

“Scott is my sponsor. It’s different.” Charles can see she’s trying to hold her words back, but some flared up part of him is just _waiting_ for them to spill from her lips, so he can use them to fuel his frustration. “You can’t have a sponsor. You know this,” she settles for eventually.

It stings more than anything, really, because it’s the truth. The anger deflates, and he just wants to go home and crawl into his _futon._ “You wouldn’t _let_ him sponsor you, Charles.” She brings her hands to his cheeks, thumbs tracing over the bone under his eyes. “With time, it will hurt less. If you let this carry on, he’s going to find out one truth or the other, and you won’t have a choice in that like you have a choice in this.”

A choice - like Charles ever had a choice in his life. Not in the slave markets, not in who bought him, and never in love. “A geisha is never free to love,” he mutters, a broken laugh following, and he shuts his eyes and lets his head fall back against the wall.

“Let’s go home,” Jean says quietly. “Do you want to say goodbye to Erik?”

Charles scoffs, voice warbling and wet. “I thought I was meant to ignore him. He just bought me for the week, Jean.”

“Then you have a week, until it’s over.”

A week to last him the rest of his life, because Charles is sure that when all this is over he’s going to lock his heart away along with his telepathy, to protect himself from the memories and the pain. When Erik finds out he’s a man his reputation will be ruined, anyway, so he may as well just give up his career as a geisha and become a maid alongside Moira and Marie.

There’s no way his heart will remain intact when everything ends, by one means or another; with betrayal or with the premature sanctioning off all Charles’ feelings for Erik.

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

_“Charles…”_  

 _They’re in a bedroom, Erik’s or his own, Charles can’t tell, can’t care to tell, not when Erik ranges over him with one hand next to Charles’ head and the other pressing just under his collar, fingers splayed over his thin bones and falling into the hollow of his throat. The tatami under his back is unyielding where Charles has shifted off the plush futon, and it scratches against the silk of his kimono. Erik’s words are heavy and coated thickly with his accent, a murmur against Charles’ skin that he can’t hear. His suit jacket is somewhere on the floor, the top buttons of his shirt opened and revealing a tanned and toned chest that Charles wants to drag his teeth over. Erik says something to him through a wicked grin that sounds a lot like_ mine _, pushes the kimono from Charles’ shoulders, lets his hungry green stippled grey eyes rake over Charles’ naked chest, and Charles can’t help but gasp, can’t stop himself from arching up against the German’s body and baring his throat for Erik to bite into, mark him as his geisha._

 _Erik moans against his skin when Charles lets his thighs fall open around the German’s hips, and he presses himself against Charles, grinding down on him and holding his throat and kissing his open red mouth, finally,_ finally _kissing him, with his tongue licking over his teeth and drawing light pretty moans and keens from his chest. One hand slinks down to the heat between Charles’ legs, reaching up under his kimono, up up up and_ yes _, there, right_ there _…_  

Charles awakes with a gasp and a shudder, skin sticky with sweat and clinging to his thin nightdress. The feather down duvet of his _futon_ has been kicked away and cast off to the side, and when Charles chances a glance down between his thighs he wishes he hadn’t, falling back against his bed with a groan and glaring at dawn’s fringes creeping up from the horizon out his window.

When he shuts his eyes he sees the hungry fire in Erik’s as Erik had watched him fall apart beneath him, and Charles curses loudly into the empty, still room. He rolls over and drags his pillow over his head, wilfully ignoring the tightness low in his belly and the rapid pounding of his heart.

Try as he might, though, he doesn’t fall back asleep.

It’s been four days since the banquet, since Charles saw Erik, but he still can’t seem to push him from his mind. He’s meant to be taking Charles to a sumo match today. Charles groans loudly again, thrashing his legs in a brief tantrum in his bed.

Maybe he can send Jean to go for him instead-

And then he remembers that she’s _coming,_ along with Scott, and Alex, back from the north with news for Emma. _News._

Charles would wish he were still asleep, but he knows where _that_ would have ended, and in tandem with sticky thighs he’d have sticky sheets and a burning shame he could never go to Moira with.

“I’ll write the reply to the telegram,” Emma had told Marie, where she stood in the doorway to the dining room, words sharp, final, and incontestable. That was two days ago, and Charles wishes time was on a loop and he could go back to that hearty breakfast. He doesn’t want to go today. He doesn’t even _like_ wrestling.

Whether his apprehension is caused by Erik or by Alex’s presence, he isn’t sure.

He tosses and turns in bed for an hour, before he sits up in a frumpled mess of sheets and nightdress and pulls a shawl around his shoulders, stumbling into his slippers and stomping down into the kitchen where he knows Marie is already puttering around in preparation for breakfast.

“And what are you doing awake so early, young man?” she asks, back to the doorway. “You have a big day today, you should be getting rest.”

“Do you think I’ll fit in the oven?” Charles only asks. “Do you think we could squish me into the oven?”

Marie doesn’t need to turn to him, dashing a splash of _mirin_ seasoning into a sizzling pan. Charles comes up behind her to steal the bottle and swipe his finger along the rim, sticking it in his mouth. She swats at him with her bare hand, fingers careful and never finding purchase on his skin. “Is this about Erik? 

“What isn’t about Erik with me,” Charles sulks bitterly, fishing the carton of eggs from the storage cupboard and setting about cracking them into a bowl.

Marie stills, glancing up at him. “Are you whisking the eggs for me as payment for advice?”

Charles shrugs. “It’s a distraction. But your advice is always welcomed.”

Marie’s quiet for a long while. Emma took her in before Charles, and she’s only ten years older than himself; much too old to be a geisha, no matter how hard she wished to be one when she was younger. Charles doesn’t know much about her past, except that to her, her Gift really does seem more like a curse, and that Emma freed her from the slave markets, too.

Charles watches her fold the omelette over and over in the pan, and only when she has three neat little _tamagoyaki_ rolls on three little plates does she reply. “I don’t think I will ever be able to have a love. I’m okay with it now, but when I was young it was cause for a lot of heartache.” Charles is careful of her bare hands when he passes her the bowl of mixed eggs. “I don’t want my opinion to sway you, and I’m only a maid. As much as I understand the finer workings of the geisha lifestyle, and as much as I have through you girls, I’ve never really _lived_ it.” She turns to him, looking up at him with wide, earnest eyes. “But I think everyone should experience love. I think love can always find a way, even- even for someone like me. So I think it can work out for you, too.”

Charles pulls the pot of rice from the fire, scraping it into one of the bigger serving bowls. “And if he doesn’t love me as a man?”

Marie replies easily. “Then he never loved you at all. I like to think you’re loved for your soul, regardless of anything else. Erik doesn’t seem to be that shallow, though.”

Charles smiles ruefully, leaning against the counter. “He is different from all the others. Jean wants me to end it. Emma wants me to use him." 

“And what do you want, Charles?” 

“I want my sister. But I want him, too.”

Marie hums, carving into a supple peach and slicing it thickly. “Why is it so impossible to have both?" 

And why is it? Charles could just tell Erik the truth, all of it, and if he was repulsed, if he didn’t love him regardless, he could just wipe his mind to protect himself and his sisters-

No. Charles knows he couldn’t do that, especially if he can’t even take his money. Finding out that Erik didn’t love him at all, not really, on top of having the memories that resurface every time he uses his telepathy, Charles knows he wouldn’t even have the strength to do that.

Marie squeezes his arm carefully where the shawl covers his skin. “Stop worrying. See what today brings, don’t try to sing the day before the birds do.”

Over breakfast, Kitty and Jubilee are their usual, bright selves, and it’s hard for Charles to sit and brood over his food when they’re giggling and projecting their happiness. Emma tells them how Scott will be coming to collect Jean and Charles before lunch, where they’ll meet with the rest of the coterie, including Lehnsherr, at the venue. Her reminder dashes all the progress the girls have made on Charles’ mood.

“What’s wrong?” Moira asks in the privacy of Charles’ bedroom, after she’s wrapped him tightly in a soft yellow kimono. “Is it Lehnsherr? Has he done something?”

“He never would,” Charles mutters, guilt a cold weight in his lungs.

The carriage ride is over before Charles really even has the chance to process it, with Scott and Jean sitting in the front and whispering to each other, and Charles in the back, refusing to consider himself _sulking,_ of all things. The _honbasho_ is being held in a rather large complex, which is more _long_ than anything, just on the fringes of the city. Charles just looks at it and sighs.

Logan is waiting for them by the curb, where other men and their geisha and colleagues mill about outside rickshaws and carriages and fancy western automobiles. His suit barely contains all his burly muscles, and the material stretches handsomely over his biceps and chest. Ever frowning, Logan’s expression seems to sour when Charles notices him spying Jean and Scott, his shoulders suddenly squared and broad.

“Mr Howlett,” he calls, and Logan’s heavy gaze slides to where Charles leans forward in the open carriage. “Help a girl down, would you?” The man smirks around his cigar, stepping over to Charles and pointedly ignoring Scott, even if he can’t help sneaking his eyes over for a quick glance at Jean.

Charles’ hand is small in Logan’s rough palm, fingers soft on the split callouses and dry skin. “Pardon my negligence,” he says, voice husky from years of thorough chain-smoking. He’s the only person who knows of Charles’ identity, having torn apart slaveries and freed the Gifted back when they were a commonality and he’d stood by Emma as her right-hand man. When he was younger, stubborn and scared and alone in the early days of the _okiya,_ Marie had told him grand stories of how the Wolverine had saved her, had held her in his strong arms even as her powers sucked the life from him, and Emma had taken pity on her and given her haven. Now he only acts as Emma’s publicist, introducing men to her girls. Charles can’t help knowing he’s also her informant, and that he’s tied to the Summers brothers, but it’s an unspoken kind of knowledge, and one Charles has never really wanted to delve into.

“A challenging feat, but I’m sure I’ll persevere.”

Logan grins. “Accompany me as we wait for the others?”

Charles offers him a sly quirk of his mouth. “I could never deny you a thing, Mr Howlett.”

They walk to the beckoning shade of a heavy maple tree, one of many that fringe the courtyard, leaves burnt their dusty, red hue and rustling in the light breeze. Across the way, Scott helps Jean from the carriage, grinning wide and eyes crinkling behind his black-lensed, circlular glasses. The grin reminds Charles of Erik.

“Has Emma told you?” Logan asks, looking out across the courtyard, a sea of grey suits stippled with pretty girls in their bright, pretty kimonos.

“She tells me a great deal of things, if only in pointed looks and by pursing her lips,” Charles replies, letting the sugar fall from his voice, tone deep and befitting of someone with an Adam’s apple lodged in their throat. “I have a feeling what you want to tell me is probably new, though.”

“Alex has been following his leads. There was another shape-shifting incident.”

Charles tries a steady breath through his nose, then looks up to Logan with his brow furrowed. “I haven’t been sending money. Why is he still on the case?”

The Wolverine shifts from one booted foot to the other, grousing something under his breath. “Logan,” Charles says lowly, pinning the man with his heavy-eyed glare. “Where is he getting the money?”

Logan sighs. “I may be a brute, but I’m not dumb, Charles.” When he looks at Charles there’s something knowing in his eyes, something too understanding and too raw, and it takes every thread of stubborn strength Charles has not to break his stare. 

“It’s rare in this world that we get what we want. I think you of all people deserve some semblance of happiness.” 

Charles licks his lips, voice thin. “Have you spoken to Marie since this morning?”

Logan cracks a wry grin. “Didn’t need to.”

“I won’t have you paying Alex on my behalf, Logan,” Charles sighs.

“The same way you won’t have Lehnsherr paying, even if inadvertently?” When Charles doesn’t answer, they settle into silence, not uncomfortable but still charged. Scott and Jean spy them across the crowd, and before they come within earshot Logan continues, “Let me do this for you. One of us should get what he wants.”

“What if I’m not what Erik wants?” Charles finds himself mumbling.

“Good morning, Raven,” Scott says brightly, nodding to Logan who barely conceals his scowl. “Beautiful as always.”

Charles lowers his chin delicately, casting his eyes down and tipping his shoulders only just forward, bowing gracefully. “Mr Summers.”

“And where is my brother?” Scott asks, and it’s directed at Logan even if the man sneers and wishes it weren’t. Charles forces himself not to chuckle.

“Fashionably late as usual, I’m sure,” Jean remedies, and Logan can’t help himself from looking at her as she speaks. Something tight pangs in Charles’ gut, so he looks across the courtyard. Logan exudes longing, yearning, intense enough that even with his telepathy away Charles can still feel it colouring the space around him. No doubt Jean can sense it, too. “Isn’t that him with Mr Lensherr and his associate, across the way?” she asks, nodding out to the courtyard. Almost mirroring Mr Howlett Charles’ gaze snaps quickly out to the crowd, heart picking up and thundering below his throat, mouth suddenly dry.

He’s sure Scott catches the motion, the intensity of his gaze, but when Charles spies Erik strolling across the pavement with Alex and Munoz at his side, he could hardly care. Charles barely has time to compose or prepare himself before Armando is greeting them loudly, shaking Scott’s hand, and then Alex is nodding at his brother and grinning at Logan-

And then Erik is at his side, looking down at him with that familiar, thoughtful warmth in his eyes, crinkling the skin around them. “Hello, Raven,” he says quietly, and Charles tries to ignore the shiver that chases up his spine and tingles at the base of his neck. Erik brings his hand between his shoulder blades, above the heavy drum knot of his _obi,_ giving a brisk rub before letting his hand fall back to his side before anyone else in their group can notice the attention.

“Mr Lehnsherr,” Charles greets softly, trying his hardest to keep this proper, to keep it under his control. “How have you been these past days?”

“Aside from missing you,” Erik replies, almost too low for Charles to catch, but he does and the words make him blush a pretty pink under his white makeup. “I’ve been tending to plans for the mill. Shaw has signed the contract over in America, now it’s being sent here.”

“You must be excited,” Charles says, turning his body in closer to Erik’s, breathing in his cologne-warmed scent. “Will that speed up progress?”

Erik chuckles lightly. “You underestimate the time it takes to build a factory,” he teases. “But maybe. We’ll have to see, won’t we. And yourself? How are the girls?”

“Better, now that you’re here,” he admits, and it’s true. “Kitty and Jubilation are due to debut in a month. They’re very excited.”

“Debut?” Erik asks, and he takes Charles’ arm as they begin walking towards the building’s entrance, hanging at the back of the group. Ahead of them Armando is chatting animatedly with everyone, asking a frumpy Logan _sumo_ terms and getting their definitions back in muttered replies, and Charles can’t help his little grin.

“They’re apprentices currently; once they perform at an event formally, they will be _geiko,_ and full _geisha._ ”

Erik nods, finding that sound enough. “Shaw told me of the difference, and of some ceremony - rising from the waters? Or something like that. You’ll have to pardon me, I’m rarely so inept with words.”

“Do you find your ineptitude occurs when in my presence?” Charles wonders airily, and Erik snorts, nudging him a little as they walk. “But _mizuage_ is the term. However, a ceremony…” he shrugs a little. “Between two people.”

Erik stiffens a little under his touch. “Yes, Shaw told me,” he says, a little dry, and Charles grins.

“Why, Mr Lehnsherr, do you feel embarrassed? But you’re European!” Erik only seems to tense further.

“You’re _geiko,_ are you not?” is all he says. “Sorry, I-”

“Erik,” Charles interrupts, voice clear and gentle, and he lets his fingers stroke over the thick material of the German’s sleeve, and gods, why does this come so naturally, why does it feel so _good_ to be with Erik like this- “You told me you weren’t a jealous man." 

“And I’m not,” Erik replies, a little strained, and Charles can see all the words he still wants to say behind his eyes, but never pushes for more and never delves into his mind. “My apologies, I didn’t intend to cause offence-”

Charles feels bad, teasing him like this, and when they come to the ticket gate at the entrance of the building, and when Charles is sure no one is looking, he lets his head press against Erik’s arm, angled just so to save his make up. He can feel the curve and bulge of Erik’s bicep under his cheek. “No, I’m sorry. Forgive me for teasing you; I’ve never been sponsored, and geisha no longer practice the _traditional mizuage_ ceremony. Calm your mind, Mr Lehnsherr.”

Touching as they are Charles can’t ignore the burst of sparks that lights from Erik’s mind along his synapses, and the man looses a sigh. “Is that why you’ve not been sponsored? Because you’re a pest?”

Charles pulls away, looking up at Erik in mock aghast. “I’ll have Logan on you for your rudeness.”

Erik leans down and whispers into Charles’ ear, lips just brushing his skin, and Charles shivers. “I could take him.” The low, dirty husk on his words brings Charles’ dream from the deep recess of his mind, and his skin burns hot under his kimono.

“You two,” Logan snaps from ahead of them, casting a pointed glare over his shoulder. “Hurry up.”

“Could you really?” Charles mutters, and Erik snorts.

The building seems magically larger on the inside than Charles had perceived it to be, looking on from the outside. Scott leads them down the main corridor, where laughter and cheers seem to ricochet from the walls and echo louder the further along they go, down to the arena. The open space is almost gargantuan, Charles thinks, not having been to a sumo match since he was _maiko_ and Jean had toted him along with her, before Scott was her sponsor and tried hard to impress. The audience’s seats flank all four sides of the room, slanting upwards and providing a prime vantage point for the crowd to watch down at the sandy pit of the _dohyou_  

Scott leads them down and towards the front, where his prebooked seats line the side, empty and waiting. Charles is worried the moment he sits down he’ll fall asleep, but when Erik presses close to him as they shuffle into the row, he realises how impossible that might be with the German at his side.

Jean gives him a glance when he settles next to Erik, down the line and over Scott’s shoulder when he isn’t paying attention. Charles pats the seat next to him, and Logan settles down with a huff and a scowl. Charles doesn’t care for his tantrum though, knowing that if he’d sat any closer to Scott the match would begin before the actual wrestlers are out on the pit. Alex and Munoz act as the buffer between the two, sitting close and talking in hushed tones, and when Armando catches Charles looking he only smiles. Charles feels oddly like he’s seen something he shouldn’t have.

 _Don’t tell Mr Summers, but I don’t know a thing about sumo wrestling,_ Erik pushes to him, and Charles swings his attention to the German. Erik licks his lip. “Sorry. Should I not-” he wiggles his fingers up by his temple and Charles shakes his head.

“No, it’s okay,” he says quietly, patting Erik’s thigh. “I shouldn’t remember all the bad things that come with my Gift. I shouldn’t let them inhibit me.”

“Would it be audacious of me to try and think I could help you forget your less favourable memories?” Erik asks.

“You could always try.” _I’ve never particularly taken to sumo wrestling, I must admit._ Charles’ eyes shine with glee.

“I’m not sure if this will help,” Erik starts, reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket. “I actually brought you a gift.” He seems almost sheepish, almost shy, offering Charles the small square of brightly patterned silk, something weighty folded within. “I know I’m not your sponsor, but I…”

Charles takes the gift with an intrigued little quirk to his lips, unwrapping it with periodic glances up to Erik, watching the blatant nerves on his face. In the middle of the material is a small silver bangle, thick and circular, with small intricate patterns engraved along the outside that Charles thinks looks like stars. “Erik…” he sighs, tearing his eyes away from the bangle to settle up on the German.

“I know it’s not a beautiful kimono or an intricate comb,” he starts, but Charles presses his fingers to his thin lips to quiet him.

“I love it,” he says adamantly, and before his fingers can stray and trace over Erik’s mouth, across his cheek bone, settling in his hair to pull the man down into a kiss, he pulls his hand to his lap and busies himself working the bangle onto his wrist. “I really do. Thank you, Erik." 

Erik offers a shrug, taking Charles’ hand to see how it sits on him. “I’m glad then. You’re very welcome.”

Erik’s hand slides up his arm underneath his _furi,_ and Charles bites his lip, and when realisation strikes so does a swell of warmth in his belly.

“Can you feel the metal?” he wonders, looking down at the bangle, cool and weighty against his bone.  
  
“I can,” says Erik, and as proof to his statement the metal warms just enough to be comfortable on his skin.

When the match starts, and all eyes are forward and focused on the two men in the sandy arena, Erik’s hand comes to settle on Charles’ thigh. The warmth in his belly coils tight, and he lets his hand settle atop Erik’s, fingers brushing over his knuckles.

He doesn’t fall asleep, and Erik offers good mental company, filling his mind with snarky quips and gentle things. Charles almost wants to feel ashamed of himself for falling back into this so quickly, with only a few simple words from Logan, and the knowledge that Marie will balm his guilty conscience later in the kitchen when he realises retrospectively just _what he’s doing._ Emma wanted the money. He isn’t doing this for money; doesn’t have to anymore. He’s doing it for something else, something she won’t condone, simply because it’s too dangerous and too impossible.

Scott’s still prattling on about the match when their posse settles in for tea at an _ochaya_ not far from the venue, going on and on about moves and explaining to a weary looking Armando how they can be utilised. Charles knows he means well, he does, but he can’t help wondering what Jean sees in him, because he can be so incredibly _repetitive._ Part of him finds himself glad he has Erik - like Erik is his _danna,_ buying him gifts and keeping him entertained. He feels almost guilty for it. 

He catches Alex giving him heavy looks from across the table, and he pointedly ignores him, laughing along with Jean and Scott and Munoz. He finds that the American is very amicable, with kind eyes and clever, gentle words. He catches Alex looking at Armando more than once, too.

“You’ve found a beauty, Erik,” Armando declares, toasting Charles. “She’s smart, too.”

“Raven is that and more,” Erik says warmly, raising his cup but keeping his eyes lowered on Charles.

Charles smiles through it, but the small twinge low in his chest that’s cold and hard makes him think how _strange_ it is to be named wrong by Erik, how _incorrect_ it feels to be called so by a man who seems to know him so well: from knowing his Gift, to understanding the darkness behind it, to simply being able to keep up with his quips and teasing. Charles has been doing this for years, took his sister’s name when she was taken from him, and he’s content with it, he’s always been comfortable - so why does it feel so _wrong_ to be called a girl? To have Erik say his sister’s name with such reverence instead of his own?

Charles feels Erik’s knee bump against his thigh, and he looks up from the teacup in his hands. Erik is watching him with subtle concern when Charles glances to him, and he dips his head, pursing his red lips in a small, intrigued quirk before bringing the small cup to his mouth. It’s easy to forget it and let the feeling morph into something else in his chest when Erik looks at him.

They laugh and talk and drink until late evening, when Logan - whom Charles has been trying to coax from his brooding - announces that it’s due time he take the girls home. 

“May I see you tomorrow?” Erik asks tentatively as they wait out the front of the teahouse for a carriage to pull up, and Charles can feel Jean staring at him but he ignores her, taking a step closer to Erik.

“You have me booked, Mr Lehnsherr, or did you forget?”

“I could buy you with everything I own but it wouldn’t make a difference; if you didn’t want to see me, I would make myself scarce,” Erik tells him, and when he presses his palm to Charles’ cheek the geisha leans into his touch.

“This is why I favour you,” he sighs. Erik smiles.

“So this isn’t an act, then? To win me over?”  
  
Charles is speaking before he even realises what he’s saying. “It stopped being an act with you a long time ago.”

Logan ushers him and Jean into the back of the open carriage with hurried, slightly irritated and jerky gestures. The streets are emptying this late in the evening, and Charles gazes at Erik with nothing hidden now, nothing secret. Jean knows. Erik knows. Logan knows, and while Scott isn’t so observant it’s a trait not lost on his older brother. Charles could wipe all their minds at once with a sweep of his telepathy, but instead of shame, or anxiety, he feels a strange _pride_ he’s never felt before, not like this, anyway.

Before the driver can speed them off across town back to the _okiya,_ Alex catches Charles’ eye, expression stony even with Armando at his side, and suddenly everything good that Erik had put in him slips away and something else settles uncomfortably in his gut.

But then the bangle around his wrist sings with a delicate, affectionate heat, and like Erik knows he offers Charles a charming smile and pushes a thought to him-

_Good evening, schatz. Sleep well._

Just like the day before, just like last week, Charles finds himself once again torn between the two things his heart wants most of all.

*

Marie is rapping her knuckles against the wooden frame of his sliding door. That’s the first thing Charles registers the next morning, wrapped up in his nightdress and duvet and halfway off his _futon_ onto the _tatami._ “Charles,” she hisses, and his half-asleep brain can hardly process her words. “Mr Summers is here. Are you awake?" 

Summers. The heavy drapes have been drawn across his window, but Charles can’t make out any light behind the material. Summers. “Scott?” he slurs, dragging himself up and rubbing at the sleep in his eyes. _Come in_ , he sends, almost forgetting all about Raven for a moment. 

Marie slides the door aside as gently as she can, trying to be quiet like Charles isn’t already awake. “It’s Alex,” she whispers, and suddenly Charles is wide-awake and alert.

“What is he doing here?” he asks lowly, kicking his way to freedom from the hungry clutches of his duvet and pulling on a dressing robe over his dress.

“I don’t know,” she admits, helping to quickly comb through the tangled heap of his hair. “He didn’t say. He just asked to see you.” 

Charles glances in his dresser mirror, groaning at the sight of his reflection with its deep dark circles under his eyes and makeup-stained lips. Alex knows his true gender, but Emma pays him well for his silence alongside his skills as a tracker. Still, he is a geisha, and he feels oddly vulnerable to be so unpresentable.  

“Should I make tea?” she asks, watching him running his brush through his wild hair hurriedly.

“Yes, thank you, Marie.”

He finds Alex waiting in the _genkan,_ and with a curt bow Charles greets him. “I wanted to speak with you yesterday,” Alex tells him, once they’re settled in the tearoom, empty with all the girls sleeping in their rooms. “I couldn’t find a chance, the way Lehnsherr was on you." 

“Logan told me of your news,” Charles sniffs, pouring a cup of warm green tea for the spy. It’s not that he doesn’t like Alex; he’s indebted to him forever, he feels. He just doesn’t know how to handle how _surreal_ it feels, the possibility of having his sister back. 

Alex’s eyes flick to where the bangle shifts over his wrist as Charles sets the cup in front of him. It’s the same look Emma had given him when she’d seen it, too, but Charles had refused to take it off, even if he had made dinner tense and awkward. “Logan lied,” is how Alex begins, and Charles flicks his eyes to settle coldly on the man, the severity of his gaze hiding the way his heart thunders in his chest. “He lied to keep you placated.”

*

Charles is still numb when Marie comes to his door just before lunch, tentatively slipping inside without knocking. He can’t see her face from where he’s curled into Moira’s side, but he needn’t to know the solemness there. “He’s here.”

Moira tries to shift him to sit on his own, but everything is _aching_ and Charles can barely harness the strength to find his next breath let alone stand. _It wasn’t her. I’m unsure if it ever was. I’m sorry._ Charles hadn’t realised just how _much_ he’d been hoping for this, under hoping for Erik and trying to keep everything blanketed by his control. He hadn’t known how much it would hurt to discover all the progress they’d made had been nothing but a fallacy.

He wonders, idly, in a small part of his mind, if this is how Erik will feel when he finds out the truth.

“Should I send him away?” Marie asks when Charles doesn’t speak, and finally, he pushes himself from Moira and looks at her with red-rimmed eyes.

“No,” he croaks, wiping shakily at the wet mess on his cheeks. “No, I’ll see him. I’ll be down in a moment.”

He doesn’t bother with his wig, and only lets Moira dust white powder over his cheeks, trying to hide the redness blotching his skin. “You haven’t shaved-” Moira hisses, biting her lip at the stubble prickling the underside of Charles’ jaw.

He’s shaking too much to grip his razor, so Moira tilts his chin back after rummaging through his draws for shaving cream, almost crawling into his lap to get the angle she needs before running the razor in quick little drags over his skin. “Thank you,” he murmurs after, kissing her cheek, and he loves all his sisters for doing everything they do for him. He just wishes the first sister he ever had was among them.

Moira picks out a shimmering silver kimono after having her proposal of a brighter dress to lift Charles’ mood shut down by the geisha, and she wraps him in it after he ties his thin white _nagajuban_ around his waist. “Are you sure you can see him?” she asks, rubbing geranium oil at his throat and on the vein-ridden undersides of his wrists.

“Maybe it’ll help,” Charles replies, running his fingers through the dark tousles of his curly hair, letting stray loose tresses sweep across his brow, satisfied with how they settle around his jaw and ears.  
  
“You must love him, then,” she murmurs, and Charles’ eyes prickle wetly. Erik’s bangle warms gently on his skin, almost like encouragement, and Charles thinks he looks as good as he ever will for someone who’s been crying the morning away.

Kitty and Jubilee watch him from their bedroom doorway as he walks down the stairs, and he can feel their eyes hot on the back of his neck. They know. They must know by now. Secrets are surprisingly difficult to keep in this _okiya._

Marie has left Erik to wait in the _genkan,_ and he stands in a neat dark suit with his hat held to his chest, chatting warmly with the maid. A surge of something peaceful and calm rises in Charles’ chest, and he almost aches, because in any other world maybe this could be Erik, in love with Charles instead of Raven. This could be Erik here to collect _him,_ flirting with him and teasing him and touching him, and in the privacy found between the early hours and bedroom walls, lying with him in a nest of blankets on Charles’ _futon_ with his hips between Charles’ thighs. 

That can never happen. It will never happen: because Erik is in love with a girl, not him, never him.

But when Erik breaks mid-sentence and his eyes drag from Marie to where Charles descends the stairs, even without his wig and hardly any makeup altering his features, the look Erik gives him and the way his thoughts colour with purples and golds makes it easy for Charles to convince himself that yes, this could be forever; that yes, regardless of his lies, regardless of his gender, Erik will love him so unconditionally none of it would matter. 

And yet the risk still runs that he wouldn’t. There’s still the fear that the softness in his eyes would turn to steel, and he’d look at Charles with disgust rather than love, and he’d walk out of the _okiya_ without another glance back. The thought makes Charles’ legs weak.

Erik can never know the truth.

“Raven,” the German murmurs, stepping to the edge of the _genkan_ and gazing up at Charles with such earnest conviction, in such a reverence, and Charles wants to cry. _Raven, Raven Raven…_ it was foolish of him to ever think he could get her back.

Before the wet in his eyes can even spill down onto his white cheeks, Erik’s brow is furrowing, his mouth tight, and disregarding manners he’s stepping up onto the wooden floor of the house and taking Charles in his arms. “Raven, what’s wrong?” _That isn’t me, that isn’t me-_

 _Charles,_ Moira presses, but he ignores her, taking a shaky breath and looking past Erik’s shoulder.

“Raven?” he asks, so quietly Charles wouldn’t know he’d spoken if he hadn’t felt the way the word had vibrated in his chest, pressed flush against his own, and it’s the final crack in Charles’ resolve that weakens it all and lets his dammed tears and banked emotions flooding through.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, voice straining and taut. “I’m sorry, Erik, I-”

He can hear Marie and Moira stepping up to him, and he can feel Erik looking up at the women like they might have an answer, and he feels so _unprofessional,_ he wants to laugh at it. He feels so _guilty,_ for the lies, for making Erik uncomfortable, for dragging Erik into this, because he’s felt his mind and heard his words and he knows the man means every damn one, and Charles is only going to break his heart.

“Hey, hey now,” Erik says lightly, pulling away and crouching a little to come to Charles’ eyelevel, and he feels like such a _child-_ “It’s okay, it’s all okay,” he says soothingly, thumb stroking a fan over Charles’ cheek and catching in his spilt tears. “Do you want me to go?”

“Stay,” Charles begs, and it’s wet and full and gasped with a sob, and _Erik doesn’t love him_ but he _needs this,_ his girls love him but not in that way, Raven loved him but now she’s gone, and Charles just needs Erik to stay even though he knows once he finds out the truth he never will. He doesn’t realise he’s leading Erik to the back courtyard until they come to the verandah, and Erik offers his sturdy forearm as Charles steps into his clunky outdoor clogs. He hardly cares for how they look. “I’m sorry,” he starts, his throat dry and raw. “I’m sorry, I’ve ruined your day and I’m wasting your money-" 

Erik turns on him, taking his arm in his hand and gazing at him with such an intensity it makes Charles still, makes the tears stop spilling from his eyes and tracking down his face. “Don’t,” he starts, tone almost dangerous. “Never say that. You could never ruin anything.” Charles can’t bring himself to look at the conviction in Erik’s eyes.

The courtyard is only so big, but it’s secluded, and Erik leads him across the rocky ground to a low wooden bench that sits under the canopy of the shedding jacaranda tree. Purple petals carpet the ground around them in a pretty little circle, and when Erik makes sure Charles is settled comfortably on the bench before sitting himself it makes him want to cry fresh, pained tears. He doesn’t deserve Erik, especially not after lying like he has.

“We don’t have to go anywhere today,” the German tells him, sitting close enough that Charles could slide over and rest his head against his shoulder if he wished, but still with a slight gap between them, giving him space enough if he needs it. “We can just sit. I can go back to my rooms, if you’d prefer to be alone. Anything you want, you tell me, all right?” 

Charles doesn’t _deserve him,_ and he brings his trembling hands to his face, trying to hide the way he grits his teeth and scrunches his eyes shut. _Thank you,_ he manages to press, before retracting his telepathy from the open, welcoming warmth of Erik’s mind quickly. They sit in silence for a while, a quiet filled with Charles’ occasional sniffles, and Erik offer him a handkerchief which he takes and dabs at his eyes. “My makeup is probably terrible,” he tries to joke, and Erik smiles at him.

“Nothing about you is terrible,” the German retorts, and Charles swats at his shoulder. “Let me help.”

He takes the cloth from him, and Charles stills, holding his shaky breath even as Erik leans in and begins to wipe gently at the white powder, all streaked and damp by Charles’ tears. Charles watches his eyes as Erik works, his own steel grey and yet not cold sweeping over the geisha’s face. He hums when he pulls away.

“No,” Erik says, slow and dismal, clicking his tongue. “That didn’t help at all." 

Charles can’t help the bubbling laugh that rises from his chest, and it feels fresh and clean, like the air after a spring shower. “Stop it, stop moving, I have to get this spot,” Erik grouses, holding Charles’ face close and rubbing on the point of his nose, and it makes Charles laugh even harder. “You’re insufferable. Here I am trying to help…” He traces Charles’ jaw, down his throat, and it tickles more than anything.

“You’re the worst,” Charles giggles, arching his head to the side and offering his skin to Erik. The German stills, his pupils dilating and fixed on Charles’ bared throat.

“Well,” he says, clearing his own. “At least you’re smiling now. I can’t be that bad.”

Charles straightens, wiping a stray tear from his cheek and pushing his hair behind his ear. “I know you don’t want me apologising, but I’m still sorry, for being such an emotional burden.”

Erik waves him off, reaching into his jacket and pulling out something small and wrapped. “We all have moments.” He passes the cloth to Charles, and just like the day before, a shyness settles in his features. “I bought you another gift. I’m glad you like the bangle.”  

The material is black, with yellow and pink flowers printed all over, and it’s wrapped in a neat little knot that doesn’t take long for Charles to fiddle with and untie. Peeling away the layers reveals a small little hair comb, with silver pins and a frame inlaid with flowers and patterns engraved in Jade. “Oh,” he gasps, running his fingers over the curling petals of one of the flowers on the side. “Erik…" 

“Here,” Erik murmurs, their fingers brushing when he takes the comb and tilts Charles’ chin up a little with his other hand, slotting the piece into the tress of hair behind his ear and keeping it secured there. “The green works well with your eyes,” he comments, and Charles blushes at their proximity. 

“Thank you, Erik,” he says, fingering the thick bangle around his wrist. “I’m grateful, but I can’t help but worry about your business…”

Erik shakes his head, pulling back a little and admiring Charles from his own space. “I want to. I’m sure you must have men giving you trinkets all the time.” He tries to laugh it off, but Charles can hear the faint worry laced in his words. He shakes his head.

“No. It’s only sponsors who give gifts,” Charles says quietly. “And I only see you, now.”

“And yet I’m not allowed to be your sponsor.”

Charles bites his lip. “I’m sorry, it’s Emma’s decision. It’s… complicated.”

Erik has never demanded more than Charles has been willing to give, and for this the geisha is grateful to his bones. It doesn’t make him feel any less guilty, however.

“Is that why you were upset? Because of these complications?” Erik presses carefully, eyes keen and calculating, watching for any signs of distress in Charles.

Charles makes a noise and inclines his head. “Perceptive,” he jokes weakly.  

“You know I’ll listen if that’s what you need.”

Charles wonders how much he should say, if he should just tell as much truth as he can bare to part with to make up for the irrevocable lie he can’t rectify now. He wonders where the lines of truth and fiction start and end, and if they’re even there to cross at all. He wonders if Emma would slap him for what he’ll say.

“It’s a long tale,” he warns, and when Erik smirks the part of his chest that’s cracked and broken shifts almost painfully.

“How fortunate I have you all week, then.” 

Charles nestles closer, pressing their sides together, and lets a sigh. “All right, then.” The words stick in his mouth, but he finds that once he manages to get them out, it’s almost impossible to stop babbling. “When I was nine, my father died, and my sister and I were outed as Gifted children,” he begins, and with every word Erik’s eyes fill with a soft, almost painful empathy. 

And then Charles tells him everything. How, with no heritage to his name, he and his sister had been sold for little coin up in the far north of the country, where the Gifted were shunted into slavery or locked away in the pleasure districts, branded exotic and rare but never treated as such, or conversely, beaten or killed for their powers. He doesn’t dwell on the months he spent shackled in houses, doesn’t speak of that time, so dark he’d almost blocked it completely from his mind. Besides, when Charles looks at Erik and sees the understanding there, he knows he needn’t even mention it; the north has been infamous for their upkeep of the _traditions,_ no matter what changes have come with travellers and time and new winds.

“Emma found us,” Charles says, quietly, gazing up at the window of her office that overlooks the courtyard. “She often bought the Gifted from slavers, relocating them and freeing them forever. I was too weak and too young to use my telepathy to free my sister and I, but Emma is a telepath herself, and she felt my mind and bought me. I suppose now that she must have seen me as her kin.”

“And your sister?” Erik asks, his hand brushing Charles’ in his lap, and Charles twines their fingers together.

“She’s a shapeshifter, but in her true form, she’s strikingly beautiful, wearing blue skin with a shock of bright red hair,” Charles says, mind distant. “She was the most _exotic,_ and being only a child, wasn’t strong enough to hold a regular form for prolonged periods of time. She couldn’t hide. They raised her prices. She was bought by someone else, no matter how much more Emma offered for her.”

Erik’s thumb sweeps over Charles’, rubbing circles on his soft skin, eyes pensive. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and Charles brings the handkerchief to his eyes. 

“I had only recently manifested my Gift, but I still felt her mind screaming for me as she was taken away.”

Charles can feel Erik’s mind working beside him but never delves into it, and before Erik can speak he presses on, ignoring the stinging in his nose and in his eyes. “I came to live here as a maid, but the _okiya_ was only just forming, and Emma needed girls to train. I was all she had at the time, aside from Jean, so she sent me off.” Hardly a lie - Charles’ gender had been easy to disguise as a child, and fortunately for Emma and her accounts, it’s a trait he carried into adulthood. Marie had been too old to train as a geisha, and Emma hadn’t found Moira yet. 

“A few years ago Emma told me she found a tracker whom she could have look for my sister. He’s been looking for her for two years now. In the last month he thought he’d been able to pin her to a place, a little ways north of here. I found out this morning that it’d been a false lead, and I suppose, after all the years of missing her, having just a few weeks of hope had made a world of difference I hadn’t realised until they’d fallen through and proven fruitless.” Charles lets a sigh as he finishes, leaving Erik a moment to soak up his words, and he feels incredibly bare and naked and vulnerable.

Erik’s hand is firm in his own, sturdy and steadying. “No one, no child should suffer that,” he settles for, and Charles can’t help the shaky breath that escapes him. “You’ve stayed strong trying to find her all this time. It can’t be impossible.”

“I’ll never give up looking for her,” says Charles adamantly. “I just let my heart get the best of me this morning, I suppose.”

“We can’t be strong all the time. That’s why we need others to be strong for us, and lift us up when we need it,” Erik replies casually.

 _Could you be that for me,_ Charles wants to ask, but the words never leave his tongue. 

“Let’s just sit here in the garden, for today, if you’d like,” Erik offers when he doesn’t reply, and Charles nods. 

They just talk. Charles is good at talking; he’s used to quick, clever responses dusted with light flirting and delivered through a smirk. But this, like everything seems to be with Erik, is different, just _talking,_ and Charles feels no pressure to impress or to sway or influence. Marie brings them lunch, and a blanket and some cushions, and they make a picnic of it, beneath the jacaranda with its strings of bright purple flowers swaying in the breeze and listlessly adding to the petals carpeting the ground, to be washed away with summer's rainy months. 

“I’d like to do this again, tomorrow,” Erik says once he finishes his tuna-stuffed riceball, “If you’d like.”

“Listen to my crying?” Charles chortles, and Erik grins.

He pulls his cigarette tin from his pocket, setting about lighting up when Charles reaches over and does it for him. “If that’s what you wanted.”

Charles plucks the cigarette away from his mouth after he takes a drag, settling it between his own lips and sucking gently. The filter’s only slightly wet from Erik, but it makes Charles’ blood surge all the same. Erik’s eyes are heavy as he watches Charles smoke a moment before he slots the cigarette back between the German’s lips. “Moira?” Erik asks with an eyebrow raised, and Charles smirks.

“I won’t tell her if you don’t,” he grins, tobacco a bitter tang on his tongue and making his smile wicked. He can’t tell if it’s the smoke he wants more of, addictive and warm, or if it’s the way Erik looks at him, his usual calm and calculating gaze turning into something heavier, something hungrier.

“I meant it, though,” Erik continues, smoke slipping out with his words. “Tomorrow, we can sit in the garden once more.”

Charles thinks he wouldn’t mind sitting in the busy market square on a Saturday morning if it was with Erik.

Erik leaves late in the afternoon, and as soon as the heavy wooden front door swings shut, scraping over the stone floor, Jean is on Charles with a fire in her eyes to match her cascading hair.

“We talked,” Charles says, placating, taking a thick tress of her hair and sliding it behind her ear. “We only talked, Jean.” 

“Know what you’re doing,” is all she says, resting her forehead on his shoulder. “Just know what you’re doing.”

The following day he wears a powder-blue kimono lined with silver thread, the Jade comb, and the bangle, and Erik brings him a box of sweet dumplings that he’d picked up at the market on his way to the _okiya_. They sit on the bench in the courtyard under the purple jacaranda, and when Charles can’t feel the lingering minds of Jean or Marie, he leans over and feeds Erik the small sugary _manju_ and catches his fingers on the German’s lips. 

Marie is lighting the lanterns when Erik leaves, and Charles follows him all the way out to the gate. “Emma would wring his neck if he wasn’t putting so much money into you,” Marie says with a wry smile, and Charles wonders if their Mother knows what Alex had told him, that Logan had waived his debt so he could be with Erik guilt-free, knows that all his earnings had been funnelled into a dead end. He wonders if she’d kick him from the _okiya_ for continuing this, for falling deeper into Lehnsherr’s mess.

The day after Erik brings a novel, something hefty and German that Charles quirks a brow at. “I’m grateful, but I can’t speak German,” he tells him, and Erik grins.

“But I do,” is all Erik replies, and Charles sits between his legs on the blanket holding the book and turning the pages as Erik reads quietly, accent soft and liquid in places, rough in others, and listening to him warms something between Charles’ legs and between his hips. “I thought it might help with your telepathy,” Erik had said, and Charles had looked up over his shoulder at Erik behind him, “If you settle in my mind to find the translation. Then you might be more comfortable with your Gift.”

He’d been tentative at first, not wanting his memories to ruin his time with Erik, not wanting to cry in front of him ever again, but to his surprise it had worked. 

They don’t finish the novel, but both give it every intention even when the sun has sunk beneath the horizon and Marie’s lit all the lamps. Charles can’t bring himself to pull away from where he’s leaning against Erik’s chest, feeling every breath he takes and every word he murmurs where they touch, even when Erik stutters trying to read words in the dim.

Charles wonders if it’s dark enough for him to just lean up and kiss Erik without anyone from inside seeing. He settles for simply lying against him, willing his desires from his heart and mind, because he knows that once he lets Erik kiss him there’ll be no turning back. 

Erik will pull him close, and everything will slot perfectly into place for one beautiful moment; and then Erik will feel his flat chest pressed against his own, and Charles will lose him forever.

It’d be improper for Erik to stay for dinner, despite how much Charles wants him to, despite how nearly everything about them is improper already, but he’s sure that if the German did stay Emma might break her chopsticks in her grip. She almost nearly does just that, her eyes fixed on Charles throughout the meal, fingers hard and knuckles white with her mind buzzing like a storm. He should feel guilty, but he can’t, not with the remnants of Erik’s voice echoing in his mind.

Emma asks to see him after dinner, and Jubilee almost drops her slippery soba noodles back in their bowl. Everything is tense after that. 

In Emma’s office, Charles turns on her before she can speak in some condescending drawl that’d make his mouth tight with frustration. “When did you find out Summers had lost her?” he asks, and Emma gives nothing away in her expression. 

“Alex told me the day you all went to the _honbasho_ ,” she says evenly, and Charles doesn’t sit when she gestures for him to. She doesn’t, either. “I had words with Logan when I found out what he’d told you.”

 _Found out._ Emma has never had qualms about reading people, has never been debilitated by the memories her Gift brings.

“And you didn’t think to tell me then?” he asks, throat tight and nose stinging. 

Emma scoffs. “So you could go and cry in Lehnsherr’s lap in front of the entire arena? I needed you to function.”

Charles understands, and if their positions were reversed he would have done the same, but knowing that still doesn’t keep his hackles from rising and frustration from lighting his nerves like electricity. “I’m not as weak as you might think I am,” he says low and even.

“I don’t think you’re weak,” Emma says, unfazed and almost bored. “But in your upset state you told him everything.”

“Not everything,” Charles mutters, and Emma hums. 

“Oh, yes. He still thinks you’re a woman.” Charles can’t bring himself to speak, and so Emma continues into the charged silence. “You’ve gone too deep with Lehnsherr. End this before I have to.”

“He’s good money, Mother,” Charles tries. It's desperate, it's transparent; they don't even _need_ the extra money anymore because Raven is-

Eventually, after staring Charles down, Emma sits behind her desk and sighs. “Are you upset about Raven?”

Charles wants to be calm, he doesn’t want to be angry at her, but he can’t bring himself back from his frustration. “I always am,” he says flatly. “Was that all?" 

Emma watches him a moment before waving him off, and in the privacy of his bedroom he feels no better. The comb is weighty in his hand when he pulls it from his hair, and he stares at it with tears in his eyes. He never likes fighting with Emma, especially not when he knows she’s right. He’s gone too far, and he needs to end it. He settles the comb on his dresser and starts rubbing off his makeup.

Every stroke reveals more of his skin, stippled with a dusting of freckles over the bridge of his nose. Would Erik love him like this? Would he love Raven if she were a man, with thick hair and a thick voice and wrapped in a suit instead of a pretty kimono?

Charles can’t even think of an answer. He knows he needs to end this. Not everyone gets what they want in life, and he’s a fool for thinking he’d be any different, that having Erik could some recompense of the universe for taking away his sister.

Just like he knows he needs to end it, Charles knows that he _can’t_ , that in the morning - whatever his resolve is now - he’ll see Erik and all his determination will be dashed and forgotten. It’s only going to end with Emma, or with the truth.

The bangle is cold and heavy on his wrist.

He wishes with everything that he could be stronger.

* * *

 


	6. Chapter 6

Morning comes, and with it is a stomach-rolling dread that Charles can’t settle even for breakfast. No one comments.

Erik comes just before lunch, and Charles can feel his mind before the man even rings the doorchimes from where he sits in his room, staring down his reflection. He hears Marie talking quietly downstairs, hears the creak of the bottom step as she comes up to him, and with a huff he gathers his kimono around him and runs into her outside his door. “I know,” is all Charles says, and Marie bites her lip.

Erik smiles at him in the entryway, and it makes Charles’ chest ache. The book is in one hand, a hibiscus flower in the other, and all Charles has is clammy skin and his _damned lies_ and a watery smile up for offer. Marie tails them to the courtyard, wicker basket packed with a light meal and the blanket with its accompanying cushions under her arm, laying it all down over the damp jacaranda petals.

“You don’t mind reading again?” Erik ventures, settling down on the rug, opening his legs just so for Charles to settle inside. Charles sucks a breath and remembers Emma’s words and his own flimsy resolve, and sits steadily beside him.

The German gives him a look but says nothing, and Charles is so grateful he could cry.

That, or it’s just this entire ordeal weighing on him.

“Of course not, I’m enjoying this,” Charles says, setting about pouring tea and hoping Erik doesn’t notice Charles’ trembling hands.

He makes it about an hour before Erik sighs and closes the book; an hour of listening to the German and nibbling on _onigiri_ and willing himself not to do something stupid. When Erik does quiet, Charles tries a coy, confused glance, but with his mind in Erik’s he hears Erik’s concern before he can even voice it. 

“Have I done something wrong?” Erik asks quietly, settling the book aside and giving Charles his full attention with something imploring in his eyes. 

His nose stings, and Charles can’t look the man in the eyes, so he glances at the bench, the gnarly trunk of the jacaranda tree, the purple violets and the bright yellow chrysanthemum bushes skirting the rocky ground, flowers nodding in the breeze. “Raven?”

Charles can’t help the flinch that skits along his shoulders. “It’s nothing, Erik,” he tries, but then Erik is moving into his space and taking his thin wrist in his hand. 

“Don’t lie to me,” Erik says quietly, and Charles wants to laugh and cry and scream all at once.

“ _This_ ,” Charles snaps, tugging his arm from Erik’s grip. “This is improper. I am a geisha. I entertain. I don’t court.”

Erik licks his lips, eyes searching Charles' own, ocean blue and bottomless. “I thought this was…” Erik starts, but he doesn’t finish.

“This isn’t _anything,_ Erik. It _can’t_ be - don’t you see?” Charles whispers, telling himself more than anything, vision blurring with hot tears filling his eyes, and _no,_ he _can’t cry again-_

Erik starts to reach for him before he realises what he’s doing and tucks his arm back close into his side. “What if I became your sponsor?” he tries, and Charles wants to grind his teeth.

There’s no way he could keep the truth from Erik then. “You can’t-”

“I’d do anything for you, you know that, Raven,” Erik murmurs, and Charles sucks in a shaky breath.

“But you don’t love _me,_ ” he snaps, unable to look at the pained confusion in Erik’s eyes any longer, staring down at where his hands fist on his kimono. “You don’t love me.” To hear the words out loud rather than in his head hurts more than he ever thought possible. 

He feels a hand beneath his chin, and when he opens his eyes Erik is holding his face close and levelling him with a steady gaze. “Yes, I do,” he says slowly, thumb stroking a gentle fan over Charles’ cheek, and his breath stops, his chest feels hollow and his heart _aches_ , because he wants this more than he ever thought he could and to know he’ll never have it is almost as bad as knowing he might never see Raven again. “I do,” Erik says again, louder, and Charles feels sick.

“How can you?” he mutters, words lost to the breeze with fat tears rolling down his cheeks, and Charles can feel Erik in his space now, moving closer, his hand firm against the side of his face-

“Some mysteries only the universe can understand,” Erik says gently, almost humoured, and Charles can feel Erik’s breath warm on his skin. "May I kiss you?"

They've come this far. Charles knows it's too late to stop this; too late to save his heart. Erik will find out and Erik will leave, but for now, Erik loves him, and it's enough.

Charles surges forward and pushes their mouths together with little grace or tact, but when Erik kisses him it’s with salt on his lips and a blooming swell of _completeness_ in his chest, warming his bones and filling all his spaces, and Charles grabs onto Erik’s shoulders lest he float away. When Charles rolls his lips over Erik’s the German whimpers into his mouth, his other hand coming up to Charles’ neck, and Charles never thought kissing could be so _good,_ but he’s not sure why he thought kissing Erik would be mundane; he makes everything new and exciting and different, and Charles has always known that.

Charles gasps breathlessly when Erik pulls away, and the German just gives him a filthy grin before leaning back in and settling his lips over Charles’ own, swallowing his little moans and gasps and sighs almost hungrily. Better than any dream, better than any imagining or fantasy, they kiss, beneath the jacaranda with its purple petals scattering around them and catching on the wind, and Charles could cry and laugh simultaneously with a joy that eclipses his worries entirely.

“I love you,” Erik murmurs against his mouth. “Say what you will. I do.” 

Charles looses a shaky breath, eyes wet and cheeks red and hands all up in Erik’s tousled hair and rubbing up his arms and pressing on the flat muscle of this belly.

“I don’t want you to cry anymore,” continues Erik, kissing along Charles’ jaw and down the side of his throat, and Charles would be worried for his Adam’s apple but this feels so _good_ he almost forgets about it completely. “Especially not about this. You have me, heart and soul, come what may.”

Charles doesn’t know how long they kiss for - hours or days or months, it couldn’t matter, not when Erik lays him down and cards his fingers through his hair, peppering little kisses on his cheeks and mouth and eyes. He should feel guilty but he can’t, his heart pounding in his chest and fingers shaking when he strokes over Erik’s face. If this is it, and this is the day when Erik finds out the whole truth, Charles won’t waste the only afternoon he has with this man feeling remorseful. If this is the day Emma kicks him from the _okiya,_ he wants it to have for something worthy.

Erik ranges over him, braced on his palms either side of Charles’ face and just watching him in a wonder so pensive Charles thinks it could almost be disbelief. The sun lights Erik’s frame like a halo, burning strands of his dark hair a dirty copper. “For a long while I was worried,” Erik begins, voice a low rumble, and Charles can’t stop himself from reaching up and bringing their mouths together. Surprise flits from Erik to Charles, spurring him on, and he licks his tongue along Erik’s bottom lip, trying to ignore the sick feeling in him belly.

“Why were you worried?” Charles murmurs, bringing a lazy hand to tug at an errant tuft of Erik's hair.

“Because I didn’t want to pay for your love, for your attention. Some part of me is selfish, however, and so I couldn’t help but want to, even if it wasn’t real. Even if this is how you treated all your clients.”

“When did you realise it wasn’t an act?” Charles walks his fingers up Erik’s chest. A warm tightness curls in his belly, gradually replacing the dread and the guilt.

“At the geisha festivals. I saw how you looked at me when I came back. I knew that couldn’t be fabricated for my the benefit of my ego." 

They never finish the book, the hibiscus left on its side on the rug, the afternoon lost to kisses and quiet words and gentle looks. Erik loses his suit jacket at some point, and Charles doesn’t even bother trying to hide the way his eyes rake over his arms and chest. “Sorry, should I just…?” Erik asks, starting to unbutton the top of his blouse, and Charles grins and nudges him with his knee.

When dusk settles Marie stands on the verandah and coughs exaggeratedly, not looking at them and walking away from the lit lantern, and Charles can hear Erik’s small noise of concern.

 _She’s okay,_ he presses, running his hand up Erik’s arm. _She won’t say anything._

She waits for them to gather themselves with Erik shrugging into his jacket and Charles smoothing his hair into something tidy from where Erik’s hands had mussed it, and he reaches up to rub at the red on Erik’s mouth with a wicked grin, no doubt his own makeup kiss-smeared and a mess. 

Charles walks him to the front garden, and they pass Jean in the hallway. He throws a glance her way but there’s something stony on her face and she won’t look at him, and the coiling warmth in his belly and his lungs suddenly feels heavy, foreboding. The street is a busy kind of quiet, with errand boys cycling past on their bicycles and men hurrying past in rickshaws, but never loud enough to draw Charles’ attention away from the German. The entire afternoon spent together had felt surreal, dreamlike, and if it weren’t for the tingling in his lips and fingers he’d swear it was only something borne of his imagination.

Erik is watching him with warmth in his eyes and his smile when he speaks, and Charles can feel the man’s mind is gentle and calm in turn. “Tomorrow,” he tells him, stroking his thumb across Charles’ white cheek.

“Did you mean it?” Charles asks softly, almost too scared to ask, but Marie’s words are coming back to him and he has to _know…_

“All of it,” Erik tells him earnestly. “I love you.”

Charles swallows the lump in his throat. _Loved for your soul - then he never loved you at all-_ “Erik, there’s something I have to-” 

Erik presses his fingers to Charles’ lips, leaning in close. “Tell me tomorrow,” he says quietly with mischief in his eyes. “Promise me I’ll see you then.”

What choice does he have. “I promise,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the palm of Erik’s hand. “I love you.” _N_ _o matter what_.

He watches Erik walk down the path out onto the street, following him as far as his vision will allow and tethering their minds as far as his unpractised telepathy will allow. For a moment he just stands there, and he breathes deeply the breeze and shuts his eyes and fills his lungs with the evening - he’s _happy,_ the happiest he might have ever felt, and he wants to cry out and dance and grab Marie and spin her round because he’s never felt like this before. Erik loves him. Erik loves him, and he loves Erik, and it _has_ to work out because this is _love,_ real and tangible.

In the _genkan_ Charles lets himself slump against the closed front door, grinning breathlessly with his heart fluttering in his chest.

Everything stops when the bottom step creaks and Charles feels Emma’s mind, cold and sharp and hard, buzzing with barely tamed anger. When he opens his eyes, Emma’s staring at him, mouth tight and eyes filled with a fury Charles has never seen before. She doesn’t even speak, doesn’t think, just turns and starts up the stairs, and reality comes crashing back on top of him.

Kitty and Jubilee watch them in the hall, slinking back into their room with lowered eyes and bowed heads. This is it. Emma’s going to cast him from the _okiya_ for this.

Ahead of him she scoffs, turning sharply into the office and sliding the door shut after Charles.

They stand in thick silence. Charles’ palms are clammy, sweat sticking on the back of his neck.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Emma begins, still standing, her hand a fist at her side. Charles looks to the window behind her, he can see the silhouette of the jacaranda tree down in the courtyard, and he bites his lip. “I don’t think _you_ know what you’re doing." 

His words feel empty and hollow. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t- things weren’t supposed to go that far.”

She tuts, waving at him with a sharp little flick of her wrist. “Sit down, before you work yourself up.”

He settles on a cushion and waits for her to speak again. She takes her time, letting the silence drag on and grate against Charles’ nerves. “You’ll stop seeing him this time, and I mean it,” she decides. “I won’t allow him to sponsor you, not with you so infatuated with him. You can’t see him as a client anymore because of your feelings. So you stop seeing him, and you go back to your regulars, and we all let this be forgotten as a silly mistake.”

Half crescents dig into the supple flesh of his palms where Charles clenches his fists against his knees. “I can control myself.” 

“Don’t lie to me,” Emma tells him tersely but with an edge of mirthless humour. “I gave you multiple opportunities to prove to me you could contain yourself, and you used them all to flirt. Then, like this _okiya_ is a joke _,_ like your sisters mean _nothing_ to you, you _lay down_ for him like a whore, in your own home.”

Charles sucks in a breath between his teeth, frustration stinging in his eyes. “I take nothing you’ve given me for granted, Mother.”

“Then stop acting like you do,” she snaps. “I’ve sheltered you for so long, but you’re not the only one under this roof. You’re not the only one I have to protect.”

“Mother-”

“Does he know your gender?” Emma asks, lips pursed.

He knows he has to try to breath steady, try to keep his temper. “No, Mother.” She makes a considering noise, but her expression remains unimpressed. At least it’s not the narrow-eyed, icy look she’d regarded him with early, the one that made guilt heavy in his lungs and shame flit under his skin. Maybe she’s calming down, and they can talk about this- 

“Just as well. You’re not to see Lehnsherr again. If he wishes the company of a geisha of this _okiya_ he may choose any of the other girls. But not you.”

Everything stops, and Charles’ throat closes around a tight lump that won’t shift. His vision blurs with prickling tears, and the bridge of his nose stings. “No,” he chokes, bringing himself to stand on shaking legs. “ _Please,_ Emma, please, I-” There’s an emptiness in his chest that makes it almost impossible to breathe, an ache in his bones that makes him want to collapse. He told Erik he’d see him tomorrow, he _promised-_  
  
“I’m not letting you ruin yourself, Charles,” Emma says, low and resolute, and Charles can feel hot fat tears catching in his lashes and hanging like crystals. “You understand why I have to do this.”

“Emma, _please…_ ” It’s a strained whisper that slips from his dry throat. The bangle around his wrist is heavy like an anchor. He understands but he _hates_ it and _things were meant to be different._

The perpetual cold expression Emma wears cracks for a second, and she allows her brow to pinch a little, her mouth to purse, and a sad empathy to fill her clear eyes. She steps to Charles, pressing a thin hand to his cheek and catching a tear with her thumb. “A geisha is never free to love,” she says softly, stroking his wet skin.

And that’s what Charles is, isn’t he? He’s one of the most prestigious and sought after geisha in their _hanamachi,_ and in the city itself. This _okiya_ is all he has, Raven taken from him all those years ago, replaced by Emma’s generosity and benevolence and her girls. He’s stable, he’s safe here. Erik isn’t worth losing it all.

“Go to him tomorrow,” Emma finally concedes, firm and absolute, and Charles knows it’s the end of more than the conversation. She pushes a curl behind his ear. “To say goodbye.”

Charles knows he should be thankful, he knows that Emma is right right right, because Erik is in love with a girl with a white face and not _him,_ and he knows it’s all a fallacy; that it always has been, right from the beginning. They’re not really in love, there’s money involved, so how could it be; _yet what_ , Charles thinks, _could this feeling be, if it is not borne of it._

“Thank you, Mother,” he forces through his teeth, flicking his eyes to meet hers. There’s something knowing in her lips and the lines of her brow, but her mind is cold and he doesn’t feel welcome there. 

At least he had the afternoon to know what it felt like to be loved. One afternoon to last a lifetime. 

*

He doesn’t sit for dinner, only washing before slinking upstairs and wrapping himself in his blankets, yielding and chilled in the dark of his bedroom. He falls asleep quickly, for which he’s grateful, and his mind is blissfully empty. There’s a quiet moment when Charles wakes, before he realises where he is, who he is, who he is meant to be today and who he is meant to see, and everything is okay for a few content and calm seconds. Everything is fine.

And then he feels the cool dig of the silver bangle on his wrist pressing a shallow welt into his skin, and yesterday comes back in a rolling tumble of thoughts and emotions that leave him gasping.

He kissed Erik - they _kissed,_ and Emma had seen, and Emma had ended it. Two months of this infatuation for Erik, and it had been concluded in Emma Frost’s office with nothing more than curt words and a hand on his cheek. He kissed Erik and now it’s over.

But Erik is as stubborn as he is sure if not always confident. Charles realises quickly that the only way to make him gone for good is to break him. He wants to roll over and go back to sleep.

Marie comes to his door, some blurred and blended amount of hours later, and she enters when he stays petulantly silent after she knocks and calls to him. He can’t see her from under his mountain of blankets but he hears her tentative footsteps and feels her settle down next to him on the _futon,_ staying silent as she cards her fingers through his hair. They both know nothing she could say would remedy this pain he feels, and so she stays blissfully quiet, only petting his hair and waiting patiently for him to stir and greet the day.

His stomach is too tight with nerves for breakfast, no matter how often Moira tries to coax him into at least a little _miso,_ his shoulders weak when she covers them with a red kimono. “I can’t do it,” he whispers, and Moira fixes his reflection a steady look.

“You have to. If not for the _okiya_ then for yourself, Charles.”

The doorchimes ring downstairs, Marie tentatively knocks on the wooden beam between the rice paper sections of his wall, and Charles just wants to wake up.

Emma is standing in the hallway watching him as he begins to walk down the stairs with shaky legs. He needn’t look at her to know the resolute, set expression she wears, can’t bring himself to glance at where she stands like a statue. The others keep to the shadows, but Charles knows they’re watching him with empathy in their hearts and sadness in their eyes. At least he’ll be a lesson to the girls, Charles thinks mirthlessly. At least something came of all this. 

He’s terribly dressed up for this kind of meeting, but part of his mind is glad, because at least Erik will remember him beautiful in his red kimono with his dark eye makeup and white face, his wig folded into its buns and layers, and his _obi_ tight around his chest. The bangle is hidden in the thick folds of his _furi._ _Do it_ _on the verandah,_ Emma projects. _Make it quick._ He suppresses his telepathy when she’s done, because Charles knows that if he can feel the cracks in Erik’s confused and pained mind it’ll only weaken him.

He stands with Marie in the _genkan,_ his breath hollow in his chest and pulse thrumming in his ears. She gives him a single nod before stepping to the door, bowing, murmuring something Charles can’t hear past the cotton in his mind-

“Raven,” Erik says with a bow and a breathless little grin that makes Charles’ nose sting.

“Mr Lehnsherr,” he says curtly, stepping past Marie and making his way out to the front of the house. The patio offers little privacy, but the street is blissfully quiet, and Charles uses the exposure as pressure to not make a scene - Emma’s girls don’t cry, not over men, not in public.

Charles can see the confusion on Erik's face so he glances away, off past his shoulder, sucking in a quiet breath. Make it quick. “I won’t be able to entertain you any longer. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.” He knows Erik will rebut it, that it won’t be enough, but he _prays_ that Erik will just accept this for this and let it _go,_ and Charles won’t have to resort to hurting him.

His prayers seem to go unanswered. Erik takes a step forward, and Charles flinches away from his grip when he makes to reach for Charles’ arm. “I’m sorry, I-” His words get stuck on his tongue, and Charles watches him trying to think around them. “Have I made a mistake?" 

 _No. I did._ “It’s simply a matter of business. I need to take on a larger client base.” Charles swallows, the bangle shifts over the bone in his wrist when he clasps his hands together. “I’ll be unable to see you again.”

Erik frowns, missing the joke, wondering if he’s not understanding the language correctly, and Charles wants to sigh and cry and settle on the ground _right there,_ kimono and propriety be damned. His skin is sticky under all the layers. “Kitty and Jubilation are debuting, you said; they’ll be taking on clients. Why is it piled onto you?” Erik’s eyes are calculating and hard under his furrowed brow when he looks up at Charles.

Like he ignored his words, Charles continues on, needing to get this out and get back inside and shrug out of this get up and curl in on himself in his bed. “You will not be charged for the days you had left with me. I’ve very sorry for this unprofessionalism.”

Erik steps forward, pain as blatant as the puzzlement on his face. “Did something happen, Raven?” he asks slowly, inclining his head just so. “What’s wrong? Why are you doing this?”

Charles bites his lip, taking another step back and finding the front facade of the house. “We had wonderful times together, I’ll be sorry to lose you as a client." 

“It’s about yesterday,” Erik concludes, giving Charles space enough but still pinning him with that intense, grey ocean look in his eyes that Charles thinks he’s drowning in.

“Just let it go,” he whispers, and he can’t look at Erik’s expression anymore because his throat his tight and his lungs are heavy and he feels dizzy from it all. Clearing his throat, he shuts his eyes and tries one more time to end this, clean and neat and easy enough for it to heal with time; but he knows that no matter how it happens this won’t ever be painless. “Mr Lehnsherr, I wish you all the best for the future of your business, and I hope you keep well.”

If his voice is shaky and thin he disregards it; if his eyes sting he shuts them to keep the tears locked away.

“You’ve been put up to this,” Erik tries, startlingly open and vulnerable, voice seamed with an edge of anxiety, and Charles can’t help his sharp intake of breath.

His words are hissed from between his clenched teeth. “Erik, _please…_ ”

“Because I kissed you,” Erik pieces, and Charles wants to scream. “You have to stop this because you can't love me back.” 

Something snaps inside his chest, some loose piece between his heart and ribs that’s fallen away and let the frantic pain out. “I’m stopping this because I don’t need you anymore,” he spits. “I don’t need your money anymore.” 

Erik’s shaking his head, refusing to believe it, but Charles can _see_ the flicker of second-guessed confusion that crosses his face, can see the doubt, and he knows with something cold and slick twisting in his gut and sliding up his throat that he’s won in this impossible battle that heralds no victor. “You don’t mean that- yesterday, you said you-”

“I’m an _actor,_ Mr Lehnsherr; saying what you want to hear is my _job._ ”

Erik’s eyes are suddenly wet, voice raspy. Charles is painfully surprised how easy it was to break Erik down. “Then why did you kiss me? Why did you go that far?”

Charles has no lie now, his only answer screaming in his ears _because I love you but_  he squashes it down alongside the rest of his free-reigning spirit. “You need to go, Mr Lehnsherr." 

Erik’s knuckles are white in his fist. “Why did you kiss me?”

“I can’t- Erik, _please,_ let this go.”

“Your telepathy, your past; you’ve always told me the truth, Raven,” he starts, and Charles can’t keep it in anymore; his vision blurs with hot tears and he hisses a shaky breath and turns away from the German, his own hand fisting in his kimono. “Tell me what is now, I beg of you.”

“I can’t do this anymore,” Charles mutters, to the wind and himself, leaning against the wall, and he can hear Erik coming up behind him but he stops the man with a stiff gesture. “I can’t _lie_ anymore.” 

“Raven, what are you talking about?”

When Charles turns on him his kimono flares around him like flames, the satin whispering and scratching together, and Erik’s eyes are wide. “We have to end this, let me _end it,_ Erik.”

“We can find a way,” Erik starts, but Charles cuts him off with a broken laugh.

“There _is_ no way for someone like me; I don’t _love you,_ I _can’t._ I never loved you, Erik, I just- I just wanted your money.”

Erik falls silent, his expression guarded. “I _used_ you! I needed the money to find Raven,” Charles continues, feeling guilty and disgusting and ashamed-

And then a chill prickles at the nape of his neck when he realises just what he’s said. His shaking hand claps over his mouth. Erik’s eyes are wide.

“To find whom?” he asks, slow and thick. Charles can see his mind working behind his eyes.

He ignores him. His voice shakes when his speaks. “If you wish the company of a girl from this _okiya_ you may purchase her, but not me. I bid you a good day, Mr Lehnsherr.”

Turning his back to Erik like this, knowing that he’ll never see him again and plagued by his guilt, fills Charles with something cold and heavy. The slip up doesn’t even matter; they’ll never have anything. How could he have deluded himself that they would?

Erik is speaking, saying something frantic and confused but Charles can’t hear over the pounding in his ears, and he starts back to the front door, scrabbling for the handle and pushing his way in. Erik’s voice is still carrying to him in the _genkan,_ where he kicks his _geta_ off without a care and doesn’t bother with his slippers as he starts up the stairs to his room.

Jean is on him but he can’t hear her, either. Emma is at the top of the stairs, giving him a look that Charles doesn’t care to decipher now. “It’s done. I ended it like you wanted,” is all he spits, shunting past her and into the room.

At least it was Emma, Charles thinks. At least it didn’t end with him feeling Erik’s disgust for him radiating fierce and strong from his mind and heart. At least he has that, one less blow dealt, one less pain felt. 

The kimono is too heavy on him, his legs too weak to support his leaden chest. He doesn’t even wait for Moira to help him, setting the wig on the dresser and turning around to look at his back in the mirror. His hands are shaking too much, his fingers slipping over the knot in his _obi,_ trying to pull and tug and untie - but Charles knows it isn’t the sash constricting his chest.

Off - he _needs_ to get the material off, needs to just shuck the entire facade away and breathe as _himself._ He pushes the kimono off his shoulders with a gasp, and he lets the tears brimming in his eyes finally spill over and track down his cheeks. The kimono and the loose _obi_ fall in a heap around his ankles, only the thin white _nagajuban_ sheathing his body, and he gasps at the freedom it brings. 

Charles stares at his reflection a moment, thin and toned from his training, all sharp lines, no soft curves. Nothing that Erik would really want.

He pulls away from his derogatory thoughts when something bangs downstairs, Marie’s hurried voice floating up to him hidden in the room, and it’s only when he hears heavy footfalls on the stairs that Charles realises something is _wrong_ and he slips his telepathy out, brushing over the minds in the house - there’s one more than there should be.

“Where is she?” Charles hears, low and raw, and he snaps his gaze down to the kimono pooled around his ankles - he can’t put it back on, he _can’t put it back on,_ and he has _nothing-_

The sliding door of Kitty’s room clatters violently with the force with which Erik throws it open in his search, and Charles’ breaths thin, hands fumbling to pull the under-kimono tight around him, stepping out of the material at his feet-

And then his door slides open, and Erik’s stepping into the room, eyes searching, settling, finding Charles, and for one tiny half-second his eyes glitter in relief and Charles feels _glad-_

“Raven?”

And then everything stops; the pounding in Charles’ ears, the shaking of his hands where he’s still gripping the white embroidered hem of his _nagajuban._ The heat in his cheeks recedes to a chill that chases down his spine when he snaps his head up to look up at Erik’s face.

Erik is standing on the _tatami_ flooring of his bedroom, hand braced against a woodbeam in the paper door, eyes wide and so obviously and unabashedly sweeping across Charles’ naked chest, down down down; to where the thin under-kimono is drawn loosely drawn at his waist, obscuring his hips-

And only his hips.

Cold realisation spikes in his chest and settles in his gut when Erik’s eyes settle on the flat plains of his chest, where the flimsy kimono puckers around the space that breasts Charles doesn’t have should fill.

His thoughts are loud and heavy, cutting into Charles’ frantic mind and leaving him petrified, stock-still and silent.

Erik knows. He’s found out what Charles _always_ knew was inevitable, always dreaded, yet was too weak to stop and end when he should have. It’s too late.

“Raven?” he asks again, this time slower, this time more confused and unsure and wary. “What’s going on?”

“Erik, please, let me explain,” Charles tries, voice warbling, no sugar, nothing light coating it, and he can see Emma over Erik’s shoulder in the hall. “Give me a chance to explain.”

Erik’s shaking his head, brow furrowed, and his hand is flexing at his side. “What’s _going on_?”

“It’s not- it’s not what you think.” Charles is too scared to even try and see what Erik’s turbulent thoughts hold, because he _knows_ and he’s looking at him with wild anger in his eyes. The German doesn’t even seem to be listening to him, eyes sweeping again and again over his body, and Charles can’t speak, because he _knows the truth_ and he isn’t going to stay.

When he does speak his words are dry and hollow and empty. “It was all a lie.” Erik’s voice breaks. Charles wants to fall to his knees, wants to cry and beg and _plead_ that Erik allow him to explain everything, explain it _all_ from the start _,_ from that damned night in the teahouse -

All Charles can do is shake his head, fingers curling in the thin sheath of his _nagajuban_ with his throat tight. Fresh tears run thick down his white cheeks, tracking through his makeup, his mask; as obvious as the flat plains of his chest and as obvious as the pain in Erik’s eyes. “Never,” he manages, and it sounds more like a sob. 

Charles always knew this had to happen. He always knew it was going to come down to this.

“Why?” Erik seethes then, knuckles white where he’s gripping the wooden beam of the door. “For _money_?” His mind is wild and hot and Charles can’t help but whimper at the sheer force that he projects the betrayal he feels. The combs and pins and clips rattle on Charles’ dresser, vibrating against the wood and clattering onto the _tatami._ The bangle around Charles’ wrist singes so hot he almost flinches.“Tell me why.” Erik won’t look at him, and it’s like being stabbed. When Charles tentatively reaches his telepathy to Erik’s mind, hoping to nestle inside and soothe and explain himself, all his finds is an anger that rages so fierce it burns him, raw confusion that twists his heart.

Everything Erik ever did was calculated and precise, sure and confident; seeing him broken like this, knowing that _he_ was the one to do this, makes Charles sick and his legs weak, voice trapped in his throat and mind stifled under the heaviness of Erik’s upset. His mouth tastes metallic. With every stagnant and charged moment the cavern in Charles’ chest is dug deeper, gets emptier, and it’s a struggle for him not to fall in. 

When he speaks his voice is hard and wet, and the words fall from his red-stained lips without any of the eloquence and grace that the years and years of expensive lessons had taught him; but they hold truth and hang heavy with conviction. “Because I love you.”

The combs settle against the floor, and the metal cools against his wrist. Erik’s red-rimmed eyes snap to him then, and the roar of his mind falls into a quiet so peaceful and so content that Charles could almost sigh his relief. He feels Emma’s cool mind coiling from behind Erik in the doorway but he pays her no attention, all of it belonging solely and so completely to Erik, just like he himself always has. Erik wets his lips, hisses a breath between his teeth - and then his gaze hardens, the metal calms, and he straightens against the door yet his presence still manages to take up the entire room, just like he always did in every crowded teahouse, every bustling street. 

When Erik speaks his voice is hard and distant, his words a smoke that chokes Charles and brings forth fresh tears stinging in his eyes. “I don’t even know who you are.”

The air leaves Charles’ chest, and instead it fills with a cold emptiness he hasn’t felt since Raven was taken away. With a straight back and not another look to him, Erik turns, stepping cleanly past Emma, shoes echoing against the wood in the silent hall. Charles hears the clattering slide of wood over frame, the drag of the front door over the stone of the _genkan,_ and the slam of the gate.

And then Erik’s gone.

Emma storms into his room, kimono flaring around her like a blizzard, and she’s yelling something but Charles’ can’t hear over the ringing in his ears. He can’t look anywhere but the spot that Erik had taken only a minute ago. Erik isn’t going to come back. Erik was always going to find out the truth.

Charles’ legs finally give out beneath him.

* * *

 


	7. Chapter 7

The days roll over, one after the other, turning into weeks, and then turning into months, and then with a cold resignation that nothing will ever be the same, years. Time is whittled down to only two things: before and after Erik Lehnsherr, and just like that dreamlike, hazy time ago where Charles couldn’t let his feelings be waived by the passage of time, now, after everything, they’re as resilient and stubborn as ever.

His punishment is that he can remember everything perfectly.

Emma had been furious, and for days after Erik had left she’d paced the hallways and combed trembling hands through her hair; but the clients still came, toting no rumours and bringing no anger at having been deceived by a _man._  

Erik hadn’t told. Charles can’t help but wonder if it would hurt this much if he had.

Emma had let him have a week to himself, no obligations, no men, and Jean let him sleep with her for want of not being alone. His room had turned into a reminder, had been given a new name: the place where Erik found out, the place where he last saw Erik. In those early days everything, even breathing, had hurt much more than he could have ever anticipated. Charles hadn’t realised he’d fallen so hard, gotten so invested, and so swept up in everything that Erik was.

Logan had come in the summer with a new posse of gentlemen for the girls to entertain, the first time Charles or any of them had seen him since the _sumo_ match months before, and Emma had pushed him against the door in the _genkan_ and pinned him with her icy glare. No words were spoken, but they needn’t have been; Emma’s silences have always spoken more than she’d ever allow her voice to carry, her pride as a geisha never waning to the heated primitivism of anger.

He must have known about what happened, somehow, because Charles remembers watching from the foot of the stairs and feeling a lump in his throat when Logan’s dark eyes slid to him from under his heavy brow and spoke only of a deep sympathy, a painful understanding. 

Kitty and Jubilation debuted a week later, and they were beautiful. No time was lost in solidifying their place in the geisha world, and Jean and Charles had relished in the lull in their own clients with warm smiles. By the end of the first week they’d were haggard and grouchy but hid it well in their pretty silver and gold kimonos and under their black folded wigs. Emma had been pleased.

Contact with Alex had dwindled into obscurity, filtering down from update to flimsy update, until Emma had ultimately had to thank him for his services and give him a thick bundle of _yen_ for his troubles. Charles remembers the numbness that settled under his skin and sank into his bones when she’d told him quiet and in private, remembers only nodding, and then going to sleep. He’d lost Raven. He’d lost Erik.

He’d nearly lost himself, only waking up from his grey-swathed haze when Jean had shaken his shoulders and cried into his chest at the end of a week when he’d rarely left his room. He still had Jean. He still had his sisters; just not all of them.

Time passes, and Charles lets it, like waves lapping over him and slowly but surely wearing him down, smoothing out the lines of pain and loss that have etched their way into his features. It still hurts to look out Emma’s office window at the courtyard, at the purple jacaranda flowers and lacy green leaves that had made the branches heavy and full back in that perfect week; that had then slowly shed, leaving thin branches twisting and clawing at the sky only to be filled again by the next warmed, encroaching spring. Sometimes Charles finds himself sitting on the back verandah with a thin cigarette between his dry lips, the radio crackling softly behind him, and night fringing the garden and silhouetting the tree and the bench beneath it. He lets his memories mingle with the smoke, imagines the warmth in his mouth is Erik’s tongue tracing his teeth, and that his lips are kiss-sore instead of windburnt; he waits until the cold numbs him through his thin under-kimono, so it’s easier to pretend he can feel Erik’s hands on his sides and at his jaw.

*

He takes to accompanying Moira on her errands to the markets now that spring has crept from the cold shell of winter, dancing her fingers along the branches of cherry trees and nestling in hydrangea and chrysanthemum bushes. In the last two years Moira’s features have fallen prey to the passage of time, but she’s still as beautiful as ever, and holds onto Charles’ arm as they walk through the bustling market street as if she were only a girl. Charles only wears enough makeup to get by, pinching his cheeks and blushing his plush lips, but men gaze warmly at him none the wiser. He rarely uses his telepathy anymore, but it would offer little to the insight of what Charles can already see plain on their faces.

“Stop it,” Moira grouses, nudging him in the side, and he smirks.

He hides a box of smile-swindled sweet rice cakes in the carry bag Moira totes to sneak to Kitty and Jubilee without catching Marie’s watchful eye, accepts with warm thank yous and fluid bows a small netted bag of apples, and pays for spices with a wink. He can’t feel guilty for it anymore, not with the surge in clients for Emma’s two newest _geiko,_ and Charles tells a moody Moira that it’s simply promotion for the _okiya._ She’s not mad with him, not really, she never could be, but his errant flirting always frazzles her and garners him gentle slaps on his arms that he simply laughs off. 

Charles had dreaded the spring, seeing it only lit by the lights of his overplayed memories, the _hanamatsuri_ festival too raw, the _miyako odori_ dances too distracting. He’s surprised by how _happy_ he is, like the air he breathes is full and clean, and it fills him up with something gentle and light with every breath.

They meander on their way home, chatting idly about things the two youngest girls would love to burrow into and gossip about. Charles teases her crush on one of Jubilee’s clients, a young man named Cassidy with a shock of orange hair curling around his face. Jubilee knows where his attention lies, and she feels no jealousy, only a mischievous sense of glee and an inspiration to plot and plan how to get the two in each other’s space more often. Charles is sure Emma’s aware, but after everything - and with a tactful wave of her hand and click of her tongue - she lets it happen.

It’s only just brushed midday when they waddle into the _genkan,_ arms heavy with cloth bags and nets of eggs and fruit, and Marie alleviates them of their accumulation. The gentle scent of salmon clings to the air and makes Charles’ mouth water, and he’s so content he almost misses the way Marie bites her bottom lip and glances up at him from beneath a slightly furrowed brow.

“Later,” she murmurs, as Kitty bounds in from the tearoom, asking if Charles got her the new perfume she wanted. He procures the small vial with a grin, but his attention has been caught, and curiosity is an itch on his tongue. 

Charles manages the meal fine enough, pushing his questions to the back of his mind and focusing on lunch, on talking with Jean and teasing Jubilee, and not on the way Marie looks at him. Emma sits at the head of the table, back straight and eyes low, and Charles wonders, can’t _help_ but wonder if she knows something.

“Charles?” Jean says softly, offering him a scoop of rice for his bowl, something imploring in her eyes. She brings him out of his reverie, something they all got used to doing back when Erik had left. He still feels guilty for scaring them when he’d leave them for his memories.

He stays behind after the meal on purpose, waving the girls off when they start stacking bowls, leaning over to do it himself, the circular silver bangle on his wrist sliding over bone and settling against the sinewed back of his hand. The youngest two make no qualms, happy to run off to their room to practice for their dance next week. He gives Marie a pointed look, and she nods, almost imperceptible, but Charles catches it and its meaning well enough.

She turns on him in the kitchen, when he’s settled the dishes to the side of the basin, ready for rinsing. “What is it, dear?” Charles asks when she remains quiet, her eyes searching his face for something.

“A letter came for you,” Marie says eventually.

Charles can’t help but think that it’s a rather lacklustre surprise, for all the suspense Marie had clouded and caped it with; but then something catches, and Charles knows there’s more to be said.

“What kind of letter?” he wonders casually, turning away from her, pushing no pressure on the maid. She reaches into the deep pocket on her apron, and pulls out something thin, and only slightly wrinkled. Charles watches her steady hand a moment before reaching forward and taking it. The fading ink of a northern postal stamp blotches the top right side, the circle fading and segmented, the script inside almost a blob, but yet, breath-stilling and heart-stoppingly discernable.

“It’s addressed for Logan,” Charles says with an eyebrow raised, and Marie nods.

“To keep your anonymity, I presume - Logan came by this morning and left it.”

“How does he know it’s for me?”

Marie sighs. “Just open it, Charles.”

He almost doesn’t want to, almost too scared to dare to hope, not ready to let himself _want_ something so earnestly again only to have been disillusioned by his heart. He flips the letter, noting no return address, and eases the wax-stuck paper apart with his thin fingers.

There’s little script slanted across a small part of the paper, in English, but with every word he reads Charles’ eyes widen in incredulity, his heart beats harder in his chest, and he can feel his eyes hot with tears.

“What is it?” Marie asks hurriedly, stepping to him quickly and settling her palms against his steadily dampening cheeks, and Charles wants to cry out and laugh and question but all he can do is gasp, and let the hope he’d locked away two years ago on the bench under the jacaranda tree free, filling his blood and his lungs and splitting his mouth in a disbelieving grin. 

“It’s from Erik,” he laughs, airy and thin, shaking his head. “He’s found her.”

*

The countryside, a hundred shades of green and yellow segmented in rice fields and crops, is always a welcome visage to clean away the perpetual browns, greys, and blacks in Charles’ mind that fill the city as stacked-box buildings, all narrow and pressed side by side and blocking the sky. The train curls through the small hills and around farmhouses, little workers swamped by the vast spreads of their fields, little dark blue dots stippling across the never-ending green. Charles has always enjoyed the country, has always relished in being able to escape from the jasmine-clouded and white-dusted world of the geisha, but as he sits in the private booth in the back carriage he can’t help but fidget, the letter on the table before him.

It’s only an hour to the coast from the city, but Charles wishes it were longer, looking anxiously from the window, to the creased and worn letter, to where Logan sits across from him with his perpetual frown and his dark eyes flicking over the text of his novel. The brown suit he wears clings to him in an alien and unfamiliar way, no freedom around his legs or his wrists that a kimono offers. “Stop fretting,” Logan grouses, never looking away from his pages, and Charles grins nervously, rubbing his thighs. Erik’s bangle is hidden in his front pocket. Even after everything, after two years with not a word, Charles could never bare to hide it at the bottom of his jewellery box and never give it another thought. He doesn’t have to wonder to know what that means.

“You’re going to make a hole in that suit if you keep rubbing it down like that,” Logan continues, flipping a page, and Charles sighs.

“Stop teasing me. This trip is torment enough.”

Logan raises a _look_ to him from under a quirked brow. “You sure about this?”

“Of course,” Charles replies without a thought, and it almost surprises himself. “We might have finally found Raven.”

“And of the Erik side of things?” Logan asks knowingly.

Charles can’t ignore the pang in his chest or the way his throat tightens a little, can’t deny the fluttering of his heart at only the man’s name. “It’s been years. We only saw each other a handful of times.” He finishes with a shrug, to which Logan hums.

Logan had been lingering in the town the day Marie gave him the letter, and immediately Charles stepped into his _geta_ and ran to the bars and pubs he knew Logan frequented, hunting him down. With tousled hair and wild eyes he’d stood in front of Logan, breathless and begging, and Logan had made travel arrangements the next day. Logan had been in contact with Erik during the past year. Erik had stayed in the country, managing his newly constructed and solidified steel mill, just north of the city. Erik had Raven. 

Two weeks ago now but Charles still feels the sting of joyful tears and the twisting in his stomach every time he thinks of the possibility of seeing the both of them, knowing that the possibility is almost _definitely_ going to be a reality.

Logan had offered him little insight into how Erik had been. He’d grunted something that sounded suspiciously like a curse to Erik’s name, and then grouched about him being short-tempered and haggard, with more lines etched into his features than a man of his age should bare. Charles worries his lip at the thought now. Erik was always so kind, clever and gentle. Had he changed because of Charles? Because of Charles’ lies?

“You’re thinking too loudly,” Logan complains, nudging him with a booted foot, and Charles shakes himself from his reverie.

“I’m sorry, my friend. There’s just a lot to think about.”

They pull into the station by mid morning, the train shunting to a stop and letting out a great sigh of steam. Charles almost doesn’t want to stand up, too afraid that his nervous legs won’t support him, but then Logan gives him another _look_ that’s unimpressed enough to coax Charles to his feet. He feels lightheaded as he follows Logan out of the booth and down the train’s corridor, emptied of its high-class patrons, and Charles thinks that at least if he faints he won’t embarrass himself too much. 

The air on the platform is refreshingly clear and carries hints of the sea. With a breeze he catches the geranium oil Jubilee had sprinkled at his neck before he’d left the _okiya,_ and he wonders if Erik will recognise it, and then, if Erik will even recognise _him_ , bared of his makeup with his short hair, grown out of its black dye and sitting in chestnut curls around his ears and flicking over his forehead. He almost doesn’t recognise himself when he catches a glance as they walk past the glinting windows of the steam engine. 

He imagines Marie would be saying something like _love can never be forgotten,_ and clenches his jaw in determination.

“Where did you say they were meeting us, again?” he asks, keeping in pace with the burly man’s strides and looking up at him. 

“Here,” Logan huffs, and Charles’ stomach twists.

The platform is bustling with loved ones embracing, business partners shaking hands and children hurrying around their parents’ ankles. Charles scans the crowd with wide eyes, searching for someone he’s only seen in his memories for the last two years.

Tentatively, carefully, he stretches out his telepathy, netting it over the station and out the front where cars and carriages wait, flexing it and searching for what part of him knows will be the last time. He’s almost scared to touch their minds; the moment he feels Raven a fantasy he thrived off of for so long. To have it real, to feel her mind tangible and not in his imagination 

Logan leads them past the ticket booth, through the inside of the station were men wait with suitcases, heading to the capital. Charles pays them little attention, his mind stretching further and further with every step as his confidence is spurred, his heart thumping faster and faster. 

There’s a courtyard in front of the train station, separating it from the street, not very big but space enough for people to stand and wait. Logan holds the station door open for Charles to hurry through, eyes scanning and mind whipping from person to person-

He feels Raven’s mind first, mechanical yet bright and sure, and as weak as his knees feel he all but runs from the Logan, through the crowd, winding his way around men and women and with his mind locked on his sister like she’s a beacon, and a breathy laugh escapes him. He found her. He _found_ her. Alex was right, she was in the north, all this time, she was so close to him all these years.

A wisp of his telepathy sneaks and strays and settles in the cool, open mind he knows so well, then, a mind he fell in love with, the mind he knows he still loves with the swell that rises in his chest as testimony.

Erik’s mind lights at his touch in turn, all nervous awareness and bright sparks, and Charles gasps when he feels the surge of _something_ that rises in Erik, mirroring his own heavy chest.

When he breaks from the crowd Charles sees them both, standing just by the curb, and for one perfect, blissful second the three of them are all that exists in Charles’ world, milling mass forget around them. Raven is nothing like his memories, tall and beautiful even if hidden by tanned skin and blonde curls, brown eyes wide and full of disbelief and that dangerous, dangerous hope Charles knows so well, but feels so recklessly now.

And next to her- next to her is Erik, his Erik, chin scruffy, lean and taller than Charles remembers with his hands by his sides and his eyes fixed on Charles, the _real_ Charles he never had the chance to fall in love with. In his pocket, the bangle tingles against his thigh.

When Raven bounds forward and falls into his arms, crying in joy and whispering against his neck, and after Charles kisses her hair and spins her round and holds her close - nose stinging pleasantly, eyes hot - he looks over her shoulder at Erik, and the man takes a cautious step, and then another, and another, and Charles can feel Logan’s mind near them-

And then Raven turns back to Erik and her voice is so _different_ to what Charles imagined, raspy yet still clear, but she calls to Erik with wet glee lacing her voice, her toned arms squeezing Charles middle, strong from her work in the mill. Erik never looks away from Charles’ blue eyes, and he wastes no time closing the distance between himself and the siblings and enveloping them in his embrace. That familiar scent of tobacco and cologne mingles and fill Charles’ lungs when he breathes him in. The bangle vibrates in his pocket.

 _Thank you,_ Charles pushes, accompanying it with all the love he can muster, and Erik nods, shuts his glistening eyes, and instead of words Charles can feel _colours_ and heat and loss and understanding, and finally, _finally,_ something complete and whole and perfect and endless.

_Loved for your soul, regardless of anything else._

Marie had been right.

* * *

 


	8. Epilogue

The girls in the _okiya_ are always excited on evenings like this, their minds and mouths buzzing and loud. Charles would give them pointed looks from under a perfectly arched eyebrow, but it isn’t long before the doorchimes cling and sound from the _genkan_ throughout the halls, and the little metallic ringing echoes and silences them all anyway. For a moment Charles is surprised and envious that Emma can silence _maiko_ and _geiko_ alike with simply the ringing of the doorbell, but then he reasons with himself: it _is_ Emma.

He floats down the stairs and smooths the turquoise kimono around his hips, trying to rub out some of his nerves, and with a nod Marie opens the door and bows to her former Mother, forever sister and always best friend. Emma kisses Marie’s gloved hands with gentle, sugary pink lips, stepping into the entrance and shucking her white fur-lined coat. Logan takes up the entire doorway when he steps inside, age only making him seem more bearlike and burly. “I trust you’ve been taking care of my _okiya,_ Charles?” Emma asks with a smirk, stepping into her house slippers and Charles’ open arms.

“I think you mean _my_ okiya,” Charles grins, kissing her and then leaning over to kiss a hairy-faced and gruff Logan.

“Don’t be a fool,” Emma lilts, but she smirks in turn and takes his arm as they walk to the tearoom. Jubilee and Kitty’s thumping footsteps resound through the old wood house as they fly down the stairs and through the main hall, jumping into Emma’s side and wrapping their arms around her. “See?” she says smugly to Charles, and he rolls his eyes.

“You’ll always be in charge,” he concedes, and Kitty and Jubilee interrupt their brief conversation with questions and quips. The two are nearing on twenty now but Charles still sees them for the girls they are, his sisters even if he set down his geisha wig and wrapped his _shamisen_ a time ago now.

“Where did you travel to this time, Mother?”

“Did you bring us any presents?”

Charles watches on fondly as Emma relates her tales, stepping back to the doorway and curling into Moira when she kisses his cheek in greeting. “Nice comb,” she smirks, nodding to the Jade and silver piece slotted behind his ear and pulling his curls back.

“Nice ring,” he retorts, eying the gold band curled around the fourth finger on her left hand. After everything with Charles, Emma had to accept that her girls have errant, wilful hearts, and with the facade of a tired sigh but joy in her eyes she’d blessed Moira’s betrothal to Cassidy.

“Don’t you go getting any ideas,” she’d warned Kitty and Jubilee, tone severe, and the two youngest girls bit their lips and nodded frantically.

That was, of course, before Logan had introduced Remy LeBeau to the _okiya._  

“Is he here?” Moira asks, looking on as Jean shoulders past them and bursts into the room in her deep red kimono, folding herself around Emma and forgetting her propriety and poise in the doorway.

“He’s in the garden,” Charles replies, watching as Logan blushes as deep as Jean’s dress when the geisha turns to stand on her toes and kiss his jaw. 

“And Raven?”

Charles lets his telepathy filter through the happy minds of his family. Using his Gift stopped paining him a long time ago. He replies after a moment. “She’s nearly back from the market.” He pauses then, face pulled sharp in concentration. “She’s brought _mochi_.”

Moira rolls her eyes and pulls a face. “As long as the girls still fit in their kimonos. She mustn’t spoil them too much.”

Charles chuckles, nudging her. “She can’t help it; Erik pays very well. Plus, she’s been without a family for so long.”

“I know,” Moira replies, squeezing his hand. She lets him have a quiet moment, before pressing on. “And what a family she came into. It’s your turn to wrangle everyone, Marie’s almost finished with lunch.”

Charles gives an exaggerated sigh, nodding and stepping across the tearoom, with it’s bursting bookcases stuffed with tomes lining the walls. The radio lilts a gentle French tune from the corner, filling the space and spilling out into the sunny day when Charles slides the door that separates the room from the back verandah. The encroaching summer has left the air sweet and with a seam of warmth running through it, and the small breeze that ruffles the violets and the chrysanthemum chases Charles’ kimono and curls it around his ankles. 

He steps quietly from his slippers to the wooden patio, stepping into the clogs waiting there, but the wooden shoes offer little stealth and for all his grace and fluidity Charles can’t help but clump against the stone courtyard when he steps down into it. 

He cringes at the sound, which echoes around the bosky garden and garners the attention of the German, stirring on the bench across the way and curtained by purple drooping flowers and lacy, deep green leaves; who had been, up until now, engrossed in his novel.

“Were you trying to sneak up on me?” Erik asks warmly when Charles comes to stand within earshot, and Charles flushes, a little sheepishly. 

“Perceptive, darling,” he says, sitting down next to him on the bench and resting his chin against Erik’s shoulder. “What are you reading?” 

“Some English tale or another. You have too many.”

Charles grumbles. “Don’t spoil me if you don’t like it.”

“Oh, but I _like_ spoiling you.” Erik grins with all his teeth, and even after all this time it still renders Charles breathless. “Is Emma contented by your managing of the _okiya_?" 

Charles hums and presses a kiss to the closest skin he can find - just below Erik’s sharp jawline, where he’s a little prickly with day-old stubble. “She is. She wouldn’t have left it to me if she didn’t trust me.”

Erik arches his neck a little, giving Charles more room for more kisses. After everything, those two years that seem to have passed so quickly now - the propriety that Charles had tried to use to buffer himself from the German, before - he wastes no time in kissing the man til his heart’s content. “You’re retired now. We could marry,” Erik ventures casually, and Charles hums against his throat.

“I’d have to pretend to be a woman, however,” he murmurs, losing his words to Erik’s skin. “Again.”

Erik’s hand roams from his closed novel to Charles’ thigh, running up the soft silk kimono covering his flesh and squeezing lightly at his muscle. “In this kimono, you could have even me fooled.”

It had taken time; time for the both of them to learn each other anew, which had eventually become healing each other, and with Raven at his side there was little holding Charles back from falling completely into Erik. And Erik, for all his stubborn wilfulness, for all the hurt and heartbreak that cracked him open letting anger seep out and taint everything, couldn’t deny how he felt, how he’d always felt, couldn’t ignore his realisation when the next lonely spring came after he’d left Frost’s _okiya_ with the truth and a broken heart, that he was irrevocably, incessantly in love with the geisha with sea blue eyes and that clever little smile. When a burly man who spoke little asked for work in his steel mill he’d thought nothing of it; until the man had dropped a sheet on his own hand, cursed, and promptly reverted into a beautiful blue girl with bright orange hair, and it all clicked into place. 

So Emma had let them court, knowing of the heartache found at both ends of their red string; and it took time, but Erik had said his true name and Charles knew that it had all been worth it.

Now, Erik’s hand rubs slowly up, up up up inside his thigh, and Charles grins and bites lightly the bottom of his ear. “Stop it; someone will see you.”

Erik hums, and it rumbles in his chest. The fingers of his other hand find the silver bangle on Charles wrist and run over it. “But I’m so hungry,” he teases, and Charles grins.

“Excellent; Marie’s finished with lunch, and Raven’s brought afternoon tea.” 

There’s a muffled cheer of glee from inside, and Charles and Erik both turn to look at the open doorway to the tearoom. A moment passes. “Kitty and Jubilee know about afternoon tea.”

“Their kimonos,” Erik sighs, and Charles grins.

He begins his idle kissing again, and Erik rubs circles over the tender flesh under his hand. “Will you stay tonight?” Charles asks quietly.

“I can stay til the end of the week,” Erik sighs, and a spike of glee surges in Charles’ chest. 

“Alex is staying with Armando til then, isn’t he?”

Erik grunts. “You don’t want to be in the house when Alex is over. Believe me.”

“Oh, I do, darling,” Charles replies wryly, not even allowing the images of the two forever burnt in the deep recesses of his memory to rise up and make him cringe.

The breeze ruffles their hair gently, purple flowers scattering across the space to settle on the stone ground. “We should head in there soon,” Erik murmurs, carding his fingers through Charles’ short hair. “I _am_ hungry.”

Charles lets his thighs open slightly and rubs against Erik’s side. “But I’m right here.”

Erik flushes, a shaky breath escaping his chest. “You’re terrible.”

“But you love me.”

Erik kisses his cheek gently. “Yes, I do love you, Charles. Very much.”

Charles turns to him, fixing his eyes on Erik’s familiar grey, calculating and warm. One of the girls calls out to them from the tearoom, but it goes ignored. Charles is faintly aware of Kitty sighing, throwing her hands up in the air and groaning loudly, and he grins. “We’ve been found out.”

“Just a moment,” Erik murmurs, and his work-calloused fingers find Charles’ jaw, pulling him close and fanning his thumb over Charles’ supple cheek.

Before, they stole kisses in borrowed time, pretending their dreamlike bubble would never be shattered by reality. Charles doesn’t like to think this happiness now is recompense for all that he’d lost, but rather what was always coming all along, every step in his _geta_ a step towards this, trusting the stars to align and trusting his heart to know what was right. Erik wastes no time in closing the distance between them, leaning forward and brushing his lips gently over Charles’, before kissing him again and again, just like those years ago but now with no lies or fear on their shoulders or between them; they can finally love each other true and complete and whole and forever, with purple petals showering around them, beneath the jacaranda.

  
 _~fin~_  
  
   
  


* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: _Where Charles is a geisha, and Erik comes to be his sponsor. Charles is prized in his okiya and brings in lots of customers, but the head of the okiya (and the rest of the okiya, including Charles himself) will never accept any sponsor offers for him (they keep hiking up the price or something to drive people off). Reasons: 1) the okiya really loves and protects him, and 2) no one outside the okiya - not even Erik - knows that Charles is actually... a dude._
> 
> _Hence they want to protect him. It would also seriously destroy the okiya's reputation... and although, as time goes on and Erik becomes a regular, Charles wants to tell Erik, and seriously wants Erik's sponsorship, he becomes too invested in their love and afraid of Erik's probably negative reaction. So he keeps refusing Erik's sponsorship. Cue misunderstandings, etc._
> 
>  
> 
> I hope I fit the prompt! Thank you so much to everyone for reading. This is the first time I've ever participated in a group fic challenge like this, and while I'm not a really driven, push-myself kind of person (I'm really lazy.. hh..) I really really enjoyed writing for this! Congrats to everyone who participated, I think it's safe to say we all did really well, aha. 
> 
> Again, to Thacmis, I really hope you enjoy this! Thanks for coming up with such an awesome prompt, ehe :')

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [No one will recognize us for who we are [fanart]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5346236) by [Mikanskey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikanskey/pseuds/Mikanskey)
  * [i needed a way to see you again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5479664) by [thacmis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thacmis/pseuds/thacmis)




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